Everyone pretty much knows that Thermalright makes excellent quality products, their products have won numerous awards for their excellence in design, quality and performance. Up until now, Thermalright has only made the cooling products, now they have ventured into making their own thermal compound called ‘The Chill Factor’. This was the natural next step for a company like Thermalright, so today for review I have ‘The Chill Factor’ and I will be comparing it to the well known Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound to see how it compares to the king of thermal compounds… So let’s just jump right into this review…
‘The Chill Factor’ Thermalright Thermal Compound
Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos
Sponsor: Thermalright
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Thermalright ‘The Chill Factor’ Thermal Compound
Features:
-Electrical impedance and thermal resistant
-Contains no health hazardous chemical and non-electrical conductive
-Easy application, spreads easily, and easy to clean
-Contains minuscule thermally conductive particles to fill air gaps with just right amount of consistency thats not too fluidal and not too thick to prevent CPU from being pulled off its socket during removal of heatsink.
-Generous volume and competitively priced
Technical Spec.:
Color: White
Volume: 4.8 ml
Thermal impedance :0.047
Life expectancy after use: 12 months
Reminder: To achieve best result and maintain proper heat conduct, be sure to clean your heatsink often and clean aging thermal compound off CPU to re-apply Chill Factor every 12 month.
Price is around $7 for the 4.8ml tube, depending where you look.
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A Better Look at Things
:
The Chill Factor has packaging that is different from the normal Thermalright products, most Thermalright products have very non-descript packaging, with not much on them. The Chill Factors package is a plastic front with cardboard backing. The front of the package has the basic info, and you can very easily see the tube of thermal compound through it.
The back of the package has quite a bit more info, and some notes about thermal compound in general.
The Chill Factor comes in the common syringe type of applicator for easy application and storage. The syringe is very large and you receive quite a bit of compound, more than enough for many computers and many re-applications.
The compound itself is white in color, and has a little bit thinner consistency than Arctic Silver5 has, it does not have much of a smell and is a bit greasy to the touch.
We know that not all thermal compounds are created equal, the goop that you get with most CPU coolers and that comes with stock coolers is not that great. We know that the performance of even stock CPU coolers can be greatly enhanced with just using some top quality thermal compound. Arctic Silver has been the reigning champion for quite a while when it comes to making the best thermal compound, can Thermalright ‘The Chill Factor’ unseat the champion? You’ll have to continue on to find out….
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Installation, Testing and Comparison
Installation of ‘The Chill Factor’ is just like using any other thermal compound, evenly spread a thin layer on your CPU and re-install the heatsink and your done with it.
My test system is:
Intel P4 Extreme 955 dual-core CPU (3.46ghz) with Noctua NH-U9F CPU Cooler
(you can read my review of the Noctua NH-U9F CPU Cooler HERE)
Asus p5wd2-e premium motherboard
2 gigs of Crucial 10th anniversary ram PC2-5300
(you can read my review of the Crucial 10th Anniversary Ram HERE)
Powercolor X1800GTO
For testing I will be comparing The Chill Factor to Arctic Silver 5, and we can see what the difference is between them in regards to performance. To get my results I applied the AS5 and ran my system for one week (Sunday to Saturday) to make sure it was properly settled and to achieve maximum performance, I did the same thing with ‘The Chill Factor’ thermal compound as well. I tested the temps several times daily, at idle and load and recorded them, as the days progressed I could see the changes in the temperature from day to day as both thermal compounds got settled.
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On Saturday, I ran several more tests to check the temperatures at idle and load; to get the idle temperature my system was turned on and left to sit for 30 minutes, the temperature was checked at five minute intervals and then averaged out. To achieve load I ran two instances of Prime95 Torture Test, one on each core for the same amount of time, 30 minutes and check the temperatures every five minutes as well and averaged them out. Using my furnace I tried to keep the ambient temperature at 22C each day during my testing, I have a digital thermometer near my computer to check the ambient temps near the computer as well.
I checked the temperatures of my CPU using the ASUS AI Booster and FanSpeed to make sure they were the same.
Ok, let’s check out the final results, you can click it to get a larger view if need be…
As we can see from the results ‘The Chill Factor’ seems to be a bit better than the Arctic Silver 5 in terms or thermal transfer and performance. Only one degree difference at idle but at load we can see a three degree temperature difference. You might think that three degrees is not that much, but if you are overclocking then those three degrees will really count, and even if you are not overclocking then hey it’s nice to have your CPU running a bit cooler at load isn’t it?
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Summary:
As we can see from the results, ‘The Chill Factor’ is excellent, coming from a company like Thermalright this is no big surprise really. ‘The Chill Factor’ outperforms Arctic Silver 5 easily in my testing. The quantity of thermal compound you get from Thermalright is very generous and will provide many applications over many systems. From my testing I can easily recommend getting ‘The Chill Factor’ thermal compound to anyone who is looking for the best performance for their system.
DragonSteelMods gives ‘The Chill Factor’ thermal compound from Thermalright a 5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.
Pros:
-Large quantity
-Excellent performance
-Easy to apply
-Great value for the cost
Cons:
-None
I would like to thank Thermalright for the chance to review ‘The Chill Factor’ and for their continued support of DSM.
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