Introduction

Overheating any part of your system can damage your components permanently. Most sensitive components in the computer of course CPU and GPU. Keeping these components cooled means faster speeds and longer life out of your system. Today we are going to be looking at GELID Solutions, GC-Extreme thermal paste. GC-Extreme is oriented towards high performance machines which generate alot of heat. This thermal paste is designed to work both for CPU and GPU of your computer. There is no need to burn in the paste as it is ready to go out of the box. Lets take a closer look at that it can do for one of our quad core machines.

About the Product

Following information is taken from GELID Solutions website.

Description

GC-Extreme Thermal Compound (TC-GC-03-A)

Created for Extreme Users on highest level the GC-Extreme thermal compound (3.5g) achieves the best heat conductivity from your CPU, VGA or even Chipset to your cooler. The GELID applicator enables an easier application.

Recommended & Awarded by

"Taking a massive 18 degrees Celsius off the normal paste that comes with your Intel rocessor*, and outperforming all of it’s competition, the GC-Extreme is what you’re looking for if you want the highest performing grease in the market. Being paired with the GELID applicator (an innovative, flexible piece of plastic), you should not have to look any further than GELID Solutions GC-Extreme when shopping for some new thermal compound.” Techpower Up

"Die GC-Extreme hat GELID Solutions wieder die Leistungs-krone unter den Wärmeleitpasten gebracht. Durch die hervorragende Leistung eignet sich die GC-Extreme für leistungsfähige Gaming-ysteme und kann somit als neues Flagschiff angesehen und weiterempfohlen werden. Dies macht auch ATi-Forum.de und verleiht der GELID Solutions GC-Extreme den ATi-Forum.de Gold Award.” ATI Forum

"GELID's GC-Extreme thermal compound is a clear winner, as it provides lower temperatures for the same price. It is clear that GELID Solutions keeps getting better and better in this game, and GC-Extreme is a clear proof of that. If you take the MSRP of $9.99 into consideration, GC-Extreme has a clear advantage over the competition and it clearly deserves our Recommended Award."  Fudzilla.com
 

MSRP: USD 9.99 / Euro 6.99

Specifications

Now that we got basic information out of the way, lets take a closer look at GC-Extreme.

Overview

Front Shot		Rear Shot

GC-Extreme comes in a simple plastic case. One thing that jumps at you is the handy applicator. Applying the thermal paste evenly on the surface could be problematic so with this applicator you do not have to worry of applying extra amount. GC-Extreme comes with 3.5 grams of thermal paste so you should have enough for two or even three installations. On the back of the packaging we found some testimonials and temperature comparison chart. Some of the very well known brands are listed but all bellow the GELID Solutions GC-Extreme.

Recommendations		Out of the box

This thermal paste is recommended by some of the industry leaders, Techpowerup and ATI Forum. I am eager to see what it will do for us. The syringe is pretty basic and comes with a cap. As mentioned earlier GC-Extreme comes with a applicator that helps users to spread thermal paste evenly on the surface. Both of the items have this neon green theme to them.

Competition		Size comparison

Some of the competitions you might find around are Noctua NT-H1, Coolink Chillaramic and Arctic Silver 5. Here today we are going to show you physical difference of these compounds as we do not want to upset one or the other companies with test results.

Sample application

Here we have a simple Pentium 4 chip and we have spread the Noctua NT-H1, Coolink Chillaramic and GELID Solutions GC-Extreme (in that particular order). As you can see the first two thermal pastes are a little bit chunky as the GC-Extreme is nice and soapy. GC-Extreme will not bleed out and also non corrosive. So you can easily apply and remove the paste without any problems.

Testing

Today we are going to perform two test. We are going to be using Intel Core 2 Quad q6600 Kentsfield @ 2.4 Ghz with stock cpu cooler and stock thermal paste and GELID Solutions GC-Extreme to see what kind of temperatures we are going to get in idle and full load states. Prime 95 is one of favorite benchmark program, so we are going to use that to load up CPU.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q660 Kentsfield @ 2.4 Ghz		LGA 775 Socket

Stock Intel Heat Sink		Installed

Once the CPU was installed with the stock cooler we went to the Bios Setup Utility to check out what it will tell us. We weren't expecting anything crazy since we are using Intel stock CPU cooler.

Asus Bios Hardware Monitor

From the Hardware Monitor we quickly found out that our CPU is running at 29C or 84 F. Normal temperatures for q6600 in idle state would be anywhere from 22C to 24 C.

Stock Idle		Stock Loaded

Our next look was in the Speed Fan. Speed Fan is a reporting utility which tells us speed of the fans and temperatures across the motherboard and CPU cores. Since this is a quad core CPU you can see clearly Cores 0 1 2 and 3 and their respectful temperatures. The first look at at idle state of the system. With 23C on CPU (overall) we decided to load the CPU to 100% on all core and see what kind of temperatures we are going to get. With Prime 95 we got a stable 46C under full load. Not too bad considering that danger zone is at 75C for q6600.

GC-Extreme		Evenly Spread

One next test was with GC-Extreme. We have installed out chip and used the GELID Applicator to spread the thermal paste evenly across the entire top of the CPU. And once again we have used Intel Stock CPU Cooler.

Asus Bios Hardware Monitor

Hardware monitor reported that our CPU was running at 27C. This could be a little bit better since the CPU might of been hot from previous test. Never the less we already started to drop temperature.

GC-Extreme Idle		GC-Extreme Loaded

After the system loaded up we gave it about 5 minute and used Speed Fan to check up on our CPU. This time we were running at 18C pretty stable. Wow what an improvement! Under the Full Load with Prime 95 we reached stable temperature of 39C. Very impressive. This is a total of 7C.

Conclusion

I am very impressed with GC-Extreme as it looks like it has alot to offer to an average and computer enthusiast users. With temperatures being the lowest i ve seen for an idle state of q6600 its truly amazing. I would like to compliment GELID Solutions on a great invention of the GELID Applicator. With its help, i don't have to wash my hands every time i have to spread the thermal paste. Going against some of its competitors, GC-Extreme outperforms some of the best solutions out there and with being only 9.99 MSRP it really gives a competition a run for their money. Great product as it is highly recommended by UMLan!

Some Pros we found:

Great performance under idle and full load states.

None Bleeding.

Comes with an applicator.

Great performance / price ratio.

Some Cons we found:

None