Many companies have thrown their products into the arena of high performance thermal compound. They all claim heavy drops in the temperature of your components if you use their particular product, and these results are achieved through a variety of long named chemicals and metals. Ironically the first mainstream company is the one that still has yet to be thoroughly beaten at their own game. That’s right! We may be looking at a product today that can take on the thermal paste dynasty of Arctic Silver and their name is Gelid Solutions.
Gelid Solutions was formed by two Swiss guys originally from Arctic Cooling. Taking what worked and what didn’t, they setup shop in Hong Kong and have plans to provide some very high performance and high value products to the computer marketplace. Currently, they are still working or finalizing the marketing side of things, but we managed to convince them to send us some of their new secret thermal goop if we didn’t show off the pre-production packaging. That being said they do have a product ready to go, and it goes by the relatively simple name of GC1 High Performance Thermal Compound.
The product itself is a non-conductive compound that Gelid states is ideally suited for applications on CPU, GPU, and chipset coolers. Once applied you should see consistent performance for over 10 years. I’d have a problem refuting that claim, as my processors and most of the components would have long been obsolete by that point. Anyhow, here’s the remaining features noted by Gelid in their release…
- Optimal Heat Conductivity
- Low Thermal Resistance
- Non-Electrical Conductive
- Non-Corrosive
- Non-Curing
- No Bleeding
- Very User Friendly
The user friendliness comes mostly from the included spreader. In the past I’ve had to use old credit cards and the like to apply thermal paste. Rather than making you go through that rigmarole, Gelid includes a simple plastic spreader that makes application easy. Really, it’s the little touches that count.
As for pricing and packaging, we do have a few details on that. Gelid has priced this at a similar amount to Arctic Cooling’s MX-2 Thermal Compound. That means that on release we should see tubes of this go for about $6.99 USD. However, the Gelid GC1 will come in 5g tubes, which is larger than the 4g tubes of Arctic Cooling MX-2. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any MX-2 for testing, so we went with the next best known thermal compound. Arctic Silver 5 is priced at $5.99 USD for a 3.5g tube. Breaking this down to a per gram price, we have the MX-2 on the top at $1.75/g, the AS5 up next at $1.71/g, and bringing up the rear is the Gelid GC1 compound at $1.40/g. Add to that the user friendly plastic spreader, and the value of the Gelid GC1 goop becomes apparent. Hopefully its performance is as high as its price is low.
The Goop Itself
The consistency of the Gelid GC1 Thermal Compound sits somewhere between the Arctic Silver 5 we had for testing, and standard while thermal grease. It’s thick enough to be useful, and thin enough to be easily applied. Colour also sits somewhere in the middle, with the shade of grey of the Gelid GC1 sitting between the dark grey of the AS5 and the blinding white of the useless stuff.
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Testing
To test the Gelid GC1 Thermal Paste, we pitted it against the venerable Arctic Silver 5 in a one on one battle royale. We applied one paste to our test rig and let it set for 24 hours at room temperature. Once it was set, we booted the computer and left if for 30 minutes to establish idle conditions. Temperatures were taken, and then SiSoftware Sandra’s system burn in tools were spooled up to torture test the heck outta the thermal paste. CPU usage was pushed to 100%, and was run at that for 1 hour. At the end of the hour, the temperature was taken. Wash, rinse, and repeat for the second thermal paste.
Here’s the specs on our test rig:
- AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition 2.3GHz Quad Core CPU
- Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe/WiFi-AP 790FX Motherboard
- OCZ Platinum XTC REV.2 PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 Memory Kit
- Foxconn 9800GTX-512N Extreme OC Video Card
- Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.10 16MB SATA2 Hard Drive
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU Cooler
- Antec P182 Advanced Super Mid Tower Case
- Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W Power Supply
The results from our testing do tell an interesting story. It’s quite obvious from the chart that the Gelid GC1 compound beat the Arctic Silver 5 by a margin of 2°C in all tests. But if you dig deeper, you get a fair bit more information from these results.
It’s worth noting that not only did Gelid’s goop beat AS5, but it also maintained the same amount of temperature control as the AS5. The performance gap between idle and load conditions was 6°C with both compounds. This is important because if you are overclocking, or running a normally hot operating CPU, you want the temperatures to remain fairly consistent and not spike in any strange fashion. This will ensure that your hardware keeps working away happily. I think it’s easy to say that Gelid has won this round. Some of you may be grousing about the prescribed breakin time of Arctic Silver 5 which is 200 hrs and how we didn’t wait 200 hrs. Well, in our experience, we’ve only ever gained one or two degrees after the prescribed break in. Even then, you have to consider that the Gelid GC1 compound would also gain some ground as well. The GC1 still wins.
Some of you may be asking right now where the heck our overclocking tests have up and taken off to. Well it’s quite simple. Due to the abysmal overclocking abilities of our test CPU (AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition), we weren’t able to squeeze many more MHz out of it. There was a minimal temperature burst, and the results were fairly similar to stock clocks. But based on our results, it is clear that replacing the Arctic Silver 5 with some Gelid Solutions GC1 may help you drop a few degrees with your own overclocking endeavors.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Thermal Compounds are simple products to review, but have a tremendous impact on the performance of your computer. The wrong thermal compound can cause spike in temperature that may cause your hardware to slow down, or die completely. With that being said, it’s nigh impossible to deny Gelid what they’ve done with their GC1 Thermal Compound. This goop performs better then the widely used Arctic Silver 5, and it’s cheaper to boot. The spreading accessory adds to the value of the GC1 package, and makes for a much better user experience.
As for the downsides, there really aren’t any of any significance. Performacne wise the Gelid GC1 compound is a solid performer. The only thing I could see popping up is a problem with availability should Gelid have problems getting into the North American market. In the end it’s just thermal compound folks. It either works better then the competition, or it doesn’t. Gelid’s GC1 high performance Thermal Compound fits into the former of those two statements. It works. It’s work well. It’s cheaper than the competition. That means it’s earns our Editors Choice and Value Added awards. ‘Nuff said.
The Good
- Easy to apply
- Great Value
- Non Conductive
The Bad
- We still need to see how availability pans out
Overall Rating: 9.5/10.0
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