i took off my heatsink cos i was bored and though i would re apply the thermal grease (this is what i do with my time these days) put the heatsink half way back on then notices the shim sitting on teh desk next to me, paranoid of a cracked core as i cant afford anotehr processor smacked the shim on and tehn put the heatsink back on and halfway through tightening it *CRACK* purdy silvery dust falls onto my graphics card sat sulking for about 10 mins thinking of how im going to afford a new 2200+ i finished tightening the heatsink and left it for a bit to go and sulk some more i came back to it in about an hour and just thought i would turn it on, eh?? working it appears that in applying the heatsink the shim had cracked????? so much for protecting the core, altho ill never re-apply grease for the hell of it anyway (not on my core anyway )
Ironicly I fried my chip by using a shim. I was worried about cracking my Athlon 1.4Ghz, so I went out and bought a shim. Put it on, and the chip fried! Looking closer at the shim, it was bent, and had created space between the heatsink and the chip. Even more ironic is that I work at AMD and at that time was changing out about 30 processors a day, without a shim, so far I haven't cracked one processor at work, but broke mine. Now I have a XP 1800+ NO SHIM! Here's my fried chip.
never crushed a chip yet... but then again I haven't done up too many desktops... been living the laptop life.... but when I put my glorious HSF on my uberfast duron 800 i heard a huge crunch but it turned out to be my wrist.... which believe me ... was a relief anyhow... hehe zap blu-tacked his trophy to his monitor... well it's something to do i guess... [offtopic a bit: zap; i think you should start a museum of CPUs going from the really early things to nowish... would look kinda cool in a wall plaque thingy]
I was putting the heatsink on a brand new AMD Athlon 1900+ (back when they were new), and I put the clip on backward. the clip was an offset V shape, and it tilted the heatsink. I started it up and heard a POP, and that was it for the CPU.
I did that the other day, somehow managed to put my heatsink on backwards so only half of it was touching the core. duh! Turned the computer on and nothing happened just a black screen, then i noticed a funny smell! O bugger! It took seconds for the XP to burn-out, they get sooo hot! Just hoping the shop i brought it from will take it back, use the good old innocent excuse "I just turned my computer on and it stopped working." haha suckers!
Hey you're frightening me.... I'm going to set up a new PC with an Athlon XP; it's the first time I use an AMD CPU so I hope not to fire it on the first attempt!!!!! GeeK!
i know the feeling, just got my stuff(minus case and power) this evening, gotta wait till tomarrow afternoon to get my case, am a little worried about busting up my cpu ::EDIT:: success. didnt break anything, and my heatsink is on.
i use a 1900+ and it's fine, i've had a Zalman full Cu on ti and a TT Volcano 9 Coolmod. NO SHIM!!! Don't like shims much
Yea, my coolermaster heatpipe (HHC-L61) is really heavy and I use quite a bit of force to put it on and i have never used a shim. I think you need to put a fair amount of direct pressure onto the core to crack it. But still be very careful!!
My chip used to have all the sides flaked off because of a bad heatsink, seriously bad stuff. I know how ya feel Zap, i fried (complete with noise, smoke and smells) a beloved CPU with a bad shim, THAT CHIP WAS LIEK A SON TO ME
shims are a waste of money pain in the **** if u ask me built 10 pcs and i move the cpus around a fair ammount but never crunched one and the second my m8 got one he crunched his athlon 1 gig ill stick without a shim
If you take as much care when using a shim as you would when you're not, theres no reason not to use one. Once I decided to buy my 2-ton Swiftech heatsink I started looking for one. Reviews are always the best bet for information. Obviously you get what you pay for, and you should be paying for a NON-conductive shim I visually inspected (and corrected) the flatness before using it, tho just the weight of my heatsink would probably have corrected it Its all good
yea when i got my Asus Barebone system the heatsink i got was a right b**** to put on, cpu is workin fine which makes me happy! Was maybe thinkin of upgrading the cpu to a duron 1.3Ghz but if the heatsink is gonna be nasty i might give it a miss.
I sold a friend a TBird 1.4. It used to be my Dad's, and he cracked it taking off a Dragon Orb (Orbs are pos, cracked 3 of my procs) and it still worked. I used it for a while overclocking, then sold it to the friend for $30... He had some much trouble with all of his crap from mobo, to psu, to hdd, to heatsink, to sound card that he had taken his comp apart like 10x... He has cracked that core so much it looks like an oval, but it still works somehow, and it's still stable at like 55 C lol
