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[lican]

I'm not sure if anyone else has done this already, but I didn't want to do anything drastic yet, and maybe somebody here could advise me a little.

Since the x-clamps concentrate a lot of pressure in one small area of the board and thus warping it,
I removed them, and used one rectangular strip of mouse pad material (just under .25 inch thick with cloth removed) to act as a pressure plate. I don't have pictures or taken any dimensions, because I closed it up for full testing. I cut the foam to span over both the CPU and GPU area just short of the mounting holes of the chassis. In the two x-shaped depressions of the chassis, I placed strips of plastic (cut out from a margarine lid, 1 mm thick) so that the foam sits on an even base.

After laying out the foam inside the chassis case, I placed the motherboard back in, applied heat sink compound, positioned in the heat sinks (with their original mounting studs) into place, and secured them snuggly from the bottom of the case with the original small black screws. Then I turned the case upside down and proceeded to mount the rest of the silver screws, and tighten alternately the heat sink screws until all were fully tightened. There is enough pressure from the foam against the motherboard to hold the heat sinks very securely, because it spreads over a much larger area and evenly.

So far the xbox is working fine, and without the fans working hard. I think this may be a good preventative measure if it works out. I also noticed that two of the chassis standoffs were almost 1 mm higher than the rest, so I filed them down, as suggested by the xclamp tutorials I have read.