Why buy a shim

[Tygur]

I believe shims are useless. If you want to use a shim, feel free, but I think it's a waste of money.

With all the times I've put on and taken off heatsinks on AMD processors, I've never chipped a core, not even the first time I did it. And I've never used a shim.

[chris64]

I wonder why the scotch tape I put under the shim hasn't been melted by the copper shim yet........wait whats that......smoke......in my case.

j/k

Originally posted by Kc2iLq
If you look at the shim, you will see that it doesn't sit on the four pads, it actually has cut-outs to go around them. The shim helps the HS sit firmly on the core. A good shim will not only be an electrical nonconductor, but a thermal nonconductor as well. Some of the new socket A chips get very hot, and hopefully, most of that heat is transfered to the HSF. When the HS gets hot, it will heat up a thermally conductive shim, hence melting and scotch tape protecting the precious bridges.

Your best bet is probably something like this .

-Kc2iLq