OCZ Freeze Extreme Thermal Compound Review

Conclusion

All in all, while the OCZ Freeze was not the overall winner in terms of cooling performance, it did win some major victories agains some of the older compounds we tested it against. It runs an average of about 0.5°C warmer than the MX-2, 0.5°C cooler than OCZ Ultra 5+ and 1°C cooler than Ceramique on average. Since we have used averages, the temperature differences are a bit less pronounced so a difference of half a degree is quite impressive to say the least. While we do not like to bring the names of competitors into our conclusions, it is extremely hard not to draw parallels between OCZ's new thermal compound and Arctic Cooling's MX-2. Even though the MX-2 stays at the top of the heap in terms of overall performance OCZ's Freeze keeps things extremely close and that in itself is remarkable.

Enough about the actual performance of the Freeze since we are pretty sure we've drilled its great performance into you head already. What makes the OCZ Freeze stand out from alot of the competition is its ease of installation and how easy it is to remove. Not only is it the absolute perfect consistency for speading acoss your CPU but it solidifies to just the right texture for it not to become an unholy mess when it comes time to clean the bottom of your heatsink. Something that should also be mentioned is the price of this TIM; while we usually see some slight variations from one store to another, prices for OCZ Freeze can vary by as much as 110% depending on where you look. At between $5.00 and $7.00 the value you get for your money is through the roof but beware of paying far too much for this exact same product (think $12 to $14).

While we were kind of hoping that the 10% performance increase claim was true, we were absolutely not disappointed in its performance. To tell you the truth, a 10% performance in terms of thermal compound is VERY hard to accomplish unless you are comparing an extremely low-end compound to a high end diamond-based compound. Other than that, there are no negatives about the Freeze since OCZ brought a great thermal compound to the market that almost beats our top dog.

When push comes to shove, we have to give praise to OCZ for designing a great product. OCZ Freeze’s performance showed that while it is not ‘the’ ultimate winner, it is only a hair off but like we’ve said in the past; we can debate hours and hours over that one degree Celsius difference. Yet, what we really like about this compound is its user-friendliness and (depending on where you look) great price.


Pros:

• Ease of use
• Very inexpensive
• Not electrically conductive
• Easy to clean off
• Great Performance
• No Curing Time

Cons:

• Fairly large spectrum of prices for this product