We have all heard the horror stories of heatsinks, cracking the cores of (expensive) CPUs. Well here are some products that should help stop that from happening, both are anodized shims, that go between your CPU and heatsink. When putting a shim on to the CPU I would recommend that you do it with the motherboard set horizontally.

The shims

The shims were tested to see if using them produced any temperature difference using them.

Testing Method

• The Full Load test is leaving it with United Devices Cancer Research processing for 15mins and the temperature at the end recorded as the full load temperature.
• Idle Temperature is done by shutting down all programs used on my computer and leaving it to cool for 10mins and recording the temperature at the end of that time.
• The motherboard temperature was recorded at the start of the test and did not change through any of the testing.
• Arctic Silver was re-applied for the testing, as accurately as possible.

This DTS440 supports the following types of CPU's : T-Bird , Duron, Celeron, and PIII FLIP CHIP. It has cut-outs for all the bridges and components. The feet on your CPU are unaffected by the shim, as they are partially used for alignment and keeping the shim in place. It is non electrically conductive, so it will not short out your CPU, which is a very expensive prospect.

DTS 440

DTS 440	Temperature C
Mobo	22
CPU (Full Load)	39
CPU (IDLE)	27

The only real thing i did not like with this shim is that one of the ends has not been anodized. As shown in the picture, it is not a real problem as it is not near the core, it is the way they have been manufactured. Also it is not compatible with newer AMD processors.

Thickness of the shim

Non-conductive Purple Annodized spacer Tweakmonster

The Purple shim supports Athlon/Duron/Palomino/Morgan and Spitfire (only socket A). The cut-outs on this shim are a lot larger than the DTS440 to be able to support all the different configurations of the supported AMD processors. For an installation guide go to the TweakMonster guide here.

Tweakmonster

Puple Shim	Temperature C
Mobo	22
CPU (Full Load)	40
CPU (IDLE)	27

I did find 1 little nick on the shim but it was no where near the core so there was no chance of it shorting out the CPU.

Without Shims

The CPU was also tested without shims on to see if there was any difference in the temperatures.

None (surprise surprise !)

Non	Temperature C
Mobo	22
CPU (Full Load)	40
CPU (IDLE)	27

Conclusion

Now to compare the shims.

	No Shim	DTS 440	Purple Shim
Full Load	40	39	40
Idle	28	27	27
Mobo	22	22	22

As you can see there is little or no increase in temperatures by using the shims. The little difference that can be seen is most likely to do in part with the other factors that I tried to minimize for the test. Both shims are very good, but the Purple Tweakmonster allows for future upgrades of your CPU as it allows for a lot more of the newer and future AMD CPU's.

There is another place to buy these, overclock.co.uk - Great Store!