You said:
... I looked around and found no evidence of using the gpu rad as a bottom intake would hurt it, so it went there. The only other option was to be used as a rear exhaust.
(which may have worsened airflow) ...
Your specs are:
AMD Atlon II 250 3.0GHz
MSI GF615M-P33 (MS-7597)
Gigabyte HD5670 1GB
Crucial 4GB Ram DDR3 1333 MHz
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro
Windows XP Pro 32Bit SP3
And you are using a
kraken x62 unit to cool the CPU. Is that right?
Normally one would not put a heat radiating device underneath anything.
Only as a test, you could do this:
Carefully put the case on its side, boot up and measure the temps again.
(Hard drives are rated to work either vertical or horizontal. Same with fans.)