HSF Shims???

[Guest]

I don't understand the purpose of the copper Heat-Sink Shims. How do I use it properly? What is it for?

Geeeeze, this ignorance thingy is drivin' me NUTZ.... Can anyone get me educated?

Thanks!

 

[CALV]

The athlons/durons cpus are a bit odd! if you have a lok at the chip (chip as in the bit you plug into the motherboard) it has a little rectangular bit in the middle- this is the CORE and its VERY fragile, if you tilt the heatsink whilst mounting it, and apply pressure to the core at any angle except directly downwards, it may well break. There are rubber support thingys in each corner to help the heatsink from titling. The downside is, if the shim is too thick (we are talking fractions of a mm here) then the heatsink wont make good enough contact with the core and will cause it to get too hot.
Hope that makes sense!


Next time you wave - use all your fingers

 

[agpport]

Other downside is that if its just a little out of position it can short out the cpu. If correctly used a shim will protect you from damaging the cpu when mounting the heatsink, plus the contact area between the cpu and the heatsink gets a lot larger therefore transferring additional heat. There are also non-copper shims that do the protecting only.

_________________________________________
.your signature is wasting perfectly good bandwidth.

 

[Red_Zealot]

Yup...Calv go it completely correct. I had an AXIA 1.2 GHz whos core I chipped just a little, and it was dead. Now it's a keychain (Good article @ BunkerMentality). If you are carefulenough with our install, then you probably won't need a shim. Also, copper shims will actually REDUCE the effectiveness of your cooling (Source: article @ overclockers.com).

"If you teach a child to read, then he or her will be able to pass a literacy test" - George W.

 

[peteb]

A shim is not going to do anything to help heat dissipation on an Athlon CPU.

The bit that gets hot is the core, yes the ceramic warms up but the core is what needs to be cooled and should be the ONLY thing (apart from the rubber feet) to touch the heatsink. The shim, if installed correctly, does not touch the core and should not touch the heatsink. If it is touching the heatsink, it is reducing contact pressure from the heatsink to the cpu and reducing cooling capacity/heat transfer. If it is not pressing on the heatsink hard enough to do that then it is not transferring heat to the heatsink.

Whatever - a shim is NOT going to improve heat dissipation. If you get a better result afterwards, then your heatsink probably wasn't mounted ideally before you had it in there and you could possibly do better without it in there...

-* This Space For Rent *-
email for application details

 

[jc14all]

Checkout the <A HREF="http://www.athlonoc.com/" target="_new">Purple Anodized Shim Review</A> and other OC stuff.

JC-------<*){{{>{~~~~~
Fisher of men

 

[Guest]

Thanks Peeps!

I poked around and came to the same conclusion as most of you. I decided not to mess with it (didn't see the gain)

Both of the 'puters here are happy lil' campers.

Went the moderate route and fixed up decent systems for cooling.... got moderate results (1400/133 @ 1564/136)

I'll take it.. the next pennies will go for retiring the (32MB)GeForce2 GTS and bringing in some more video horsepower! (Gonna see what ATI 8500 will do and then choose between it and a GeForce3) God knows, I'll have plenty of time for research while I get enough pennies saved up for two of either one of those monsters.