Would the longer IDE cables help in any way?

Might do. The issue is that this is where the cable bends under the end of the drive tray and that the cable doesn't naturally bend with a zero radius. I thought about either taping or gluing the cable to the underside of the tray to keep it raised up off of the chips, but I don't think that can be done with the stock cable because there wouldn't be enough slack to insert or remove the cable end on the motherboard header. A longer cable might make this a possiblity - if it does I'd recommend doing that as an additional precaution.