This is a quick informative tutorial about shims. What's a shim? A shim is a piece of metal or non-metal that
sits on top of your processor. What it does is it bears the weight of the heatsink evenly across the processor
instead of just on the CPU core and it's foam spacers.
This is especially need with newer heavy 500g + heatsinks. Sometimes the weight of these beasties would crack the CPU core.
The first generation of Athlon shims were all bare metal, usually made of copper. The copper conductive shims equaled bad news for Athlon processors. If any part of the copper shim touched any CPU bridges, it would short out the CPU.
The next generation of Shims, that many companies tried was to place an anodized coating on their shims. This is better
but under the coating is conductive metal. So if you accidently scraped the coating, it could be conductive.
Also most of the newer shims, are made so that they only go around the outside edge of the CPU. Thus limiting the risk.
Finally it's possible to buy shims that are made of non-conductive material. You can get one called the "Cool Shim" by CoolerGuys.com. These are superior, as the do not conduct any electricity.
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