Careful with CPU coolers

I wanted to post this experience I have had with my hardware.  So that users of Unraid can learn from this.

Unraid is terrific, no problems there.  What I did notice, when I started one of my bluray  movies, after a couple of minutes I would hear an alarm come from my server. Looking at the IMPI logs, it kept telling me that my CPU temps were high (93 C).  I looked inside the case, the fan was spinning, and i had recently blown the dust out of the system, so everything "looked" normal.  The server had been up and running for 5 years solid with no issues.

I ignored the error, until my wife mentioned it to me.  She told me that just about everything she plays through Plex causes the alarm to go off.  So I ordered a new CPU / FAN heat sink.  I was using the old intel snap on that I did not care for very much so I figured it was time to change it.  I went to amazon and ordered a Noctua NH-U12S.  I was worried that the cooler might be too tall but if it did not fit I would run with the cover off.  I discovered later on I had nothing to worry about, I had almost 5 cm of clearance to the cover.

The part came in and I pulled the server, warning my wife no internet was available while I fixed this issue.  This was a two hour project, because I needed to remove the system board to install the new cooler.  After I removed the system board it looked like the push pins on the cpu cooler had come out of the holes on the system board.  After removing the cooler I had discovered that the cooler had indeed popped ever so slightly off the CPU causing the cooling issue.  Also the thermal paste was hard as a rock.  

I removed the old thermal paste with 99% IPA, applied the supplied Noctua paste and installed the hardware.  Now I don't have any more Hi temp warnings from the CPU.  As a matter of fact, my CPU routinely runs at 37C even under load.

My lesson is pay attention to those warnings some boards have.  Mine is a Supermicro X9SCM with 32 GB RAM.  Had I taken the extra time to look more carefully I would have not had to deal with the warning tones all the time.  Fortunately for me, no damage occurred as I am pretty sure the CPU was throttled during the over heat warnings.