New motherboard/cpu assembly. Need shim etc.

[hungary]

I'm going to purchase a new motherboard and CPU, something like AMD 3200. All online vendors list different prices for pretest, adding shim, etc. This makes price comparison difficult.

Question: For an AMD 3200 system, and no anticipation for overclocking, how necessary is it to pay for a shim and/or thermal paste? Is the basic fan most vendors include sufficient. Thanks

 

[Tu13erhead]

Whether or not you need a shim depends on the heatsink you use. For example, my Thermalright SI-97 heatsink was very narrow and only slightly larger than the rubber pads on the CPU. If the heatsink was to wiggle it could end up crushing the die. On the other hand, larger heatsinks work better without a shim, because it makes better contact with the die.

I always recommend buying Arctic Silver 5 as a thermal paste and replacing whatever paste or pad comes with the CPU. The retail HSF may do alright for basic tasks, but if you plan on using it for CPU intensive tasks like gaming, video editing, etc, you may want to look into something that will cool a bit better.