Quote Originally Posted by |SilentDeath|
Take your heatsink off and look at the inprint left by the thermal paste. If it is even, and shows good contact all over the core, then theres no need to remove the shim.
If its all to one side, or indicates bad contact, try putting more paste on, move the heatsink around a tiny bit before screwing down to smudge it out, and make sure its tightend evenly. If that doesnt help, take it off again and check the paste again, and remove the shim if nessasary.

Removing the shim is quite easy. Slide a razor blade or other very very thin sharp metal object under the corners of it and gently lift the shim up a tiny bit at a time from each corner.
Afterwards I *always* use 5 layers of electrical inulation tape to make a new shim, aobut the same hight, but soft enough to be squashed down by the heatsink. Witht he crappy two-hole-only mounting system it would be very esay to chip the core without a shim of any kind.
The imprint isn't too too bad, although it doesn't appear to be completely even... And the heatsink is practically flush against the shim... But sounds like it's fairly easy to remove the shim.