OCZ is well known for their high quality memory and heatsinks for overclocked processor. They are also no stranger to high end thermal paste, with their product line OCZ Ultra 5+.
Thermal grease is primarily used in the electronics and computer industries to assist a heatsink to draw heat away from a semiconductor component such as an integrated circuit or transistor.
Thermally conductive paste improves the efficiency of a heatsink by filling air gaps that occur when the irregular surface of a heat generating component is pressed against the irregular surface of a heatsink, air being approximately 8000 times less efficient at conducting heat (see Thermal Conductivity) than, for example, aluminium, a common heatsink material. Surface imperfections inherently arise from limitations in manufacturing technology and range in size from visible and tactile flaws such as machining marks or casting irregularities to sub-microscopic ones not visible to the naked eye.
Indian market is mostly flooded with Arctic Silver 5. Though there is no official distributor, most of them are imported in bulks. OCZ Ultra 5+ is the best competitor of AS5. Same as AS5, OCZ also doesn't have any official distributor here in India, but still, attractive price of OCZ, lower than AS5, is a sure killer of AS5 if and only if it can give equal or better performance. If it can perform, we are sure that Overclockers like us will not hesitate from directly importing them from online-shops.
After all, OCZ is a very powerful brand name.
Let us start the test.
Don't get over excited due to its big size. It contains only 3gm. of thermal paste, but should be enough for 10 to 12 applications.
Special thanks to OCZ Technology for providing us the test sample, without it, this review may not be possible due to lack of OCZ distributor/reseller in India.
We surprised to see such a big FedEx box just for a single 3 gm. tube of thermal paste.
Actually, they also included some stickers and a cool OCZ t-shirt which became my official uniform for our local Lan-parties.
Specification
- 99.9% Pure Micronized Silver.
- 3 Gram Syringe.
- Thermal Conductance: >350,000W/m2 °C (0.001 inch layer)
- Thermal Resistance: <0.0045°C-in2/Watt (0.001 inch layer)
Description
Cooling Accessories / Thermal Compound / OCZ Ultra 5+
OCZ Ultra 5+ was designed to provide maximum thermal transfer for your most demanding applications. Ultra 5+ contains 99.9% pure silver for optimal thermal transfer and will not dry out, flake or lose thermal transfer ability over time. If you are looking for the absolute best in thermal compound look no further than OCZ Ultra 5+
Contains 99.9% pure silver
OCZ Ultra 5+ uses three unique shapes and sizes of pure silver particles to maximize particle-to-particle contact area and thermal transfer.
High-Density
OCZ Ultra 5+ contains over 88% thermally Conductive filler by weight. In addition to micronized silver, Ultra 5+ also contains sub-micron zinc oxide, aluminum oxide and boron nitride particles. These thermally-enhanced ceramic particles improve the compound's performance and long-term stability.
Not Electrically Conductive
OCZ Ultra 5+ was formulated to conduct heat, not electricity.
Absolute Stability
OCZ Ultra 5+ will not separate, run, migrate, or bleed.
For more information, visit the official web-site.
OCZ Ultra 5+ vs. Arctic Silver 5
Test Configuration
Todays lower fabrication method and even lower voltage usage makes high-end processors like AMD X2, AMD FX, Core 2 Duo (to some extends) run very very cool with their stock cooler and paste. The only need for high-end silver based thermal compound is when either the heat-sink is removed from the processor to change the motherboard (upgrade or RMA) or installation of new 3rd party heat-sink for better cooling or to Overclock the CPU to its extream.
So, it is useless to test such a high-end product at a stock CPU speed. In general, we use D.O.T for everyday use, but to test it we manually overclock the CPU from 2211MHz (201 * 11) to 2600MHz (326 * 8).
Processor AMD64 X2 4200+ (939) @ 2211 MHz 90nm 89 Watts Motherboard MSI K8N NEO4 Platinum RAM Transcend DDR400 (single side) 1GB
(512mb x 2) Dual-Channel (2.5-3-3)Power Supply COLORS-iT 450W 24Pin Dual Fan SMPS Hard Disk Seatage 80GB SATA + 120GB SATA Graphics Card eVGA 8600GTS 256mb PCI-Express OS WindowsXP Pro + SP2 Anti-Virus NOD32 2.x Special Cool-n-Quite disabled from BIOS.
Softwares -
- EVEREST Home Edition version 2.20.405
- wPrime
(unlike SuperPrime which uses only one CPU thread/core, wPrime uses all the threads/cores of a CPU causing full CPU utilization)- Counter Strike: Source
- F.E.A.R
Test Environment
Outside the BOX
Well, it is June 15th. Mid of Summer season in Kolkata, India. Just last week, it was the hottest day. Test lab temperature is 30.5°c !! This is not US or UK, this is India. This is the right place to test extream cooling components.
Inside the BOX
Also, here is the list of temperature of different components that are running inside the BOX, just to give you the nature of the environment.
| Device / Component | Temparature (taken in load mode) |
|
| Chipset | 43°c | |
| Graphics card | 50°c | |
| Aux | 30°c | |
| SATA 80GB HDD | 41°c | |
| SATA 120GB HDD | 43°c |
Hope, this gives you a clear idea of the test environment.
Installation
The 'official' installation procedure is little different than that of AS5 or Akasa. Instate of spreading the compound evenly upon the processor, it is instructed just to put the heatsink upon the processor containing drop of thermal paste. It will ensure that there will be no air bubbles within the gap.
For detailed installation guide, visit their official instruction page.
Though we are quite experience with traditional method, but to get the best result we followed the official instruction.
Result
The following results were taken after one week, keeping the system laid down horizontally, so that newly applied paste doesn't tiled on one side due to pressure and heat. Thermal paste do takes some time before working at its optimum performance.
Status Stock Akasa 450 *
Arctic Silver 5
OCZ ultra 5+
Idle 40°c 38°c 34°c 36°c Load 50°c 49°c 45°c 45°c * Akasa's configuration did not include the 8600GTS Graphics card.
Final words
After seeing this result some users may think why face so much hassle to change the default thermal compound with such costly 3rd party compound just to drop 5°c.
The drop of 5°c is not the only factor you should see. There is also another parameter you must consider. Its the CPU-FANs rpm.
After changing from stock paste to Ultra 5+, our CPU Fan speed also dropped 500 to 750 rpm, that is, the CPU fan is now in far less stress to keep the processor under 40°c (default target temperature by BIOS). Less stress on the fan means increased longibity of the fan.
If we see our test results, according to our test, Arctic Silver 5 performed slightly better than Ultra 5+. But the difference is not so big that we can announce the real winner. The slight temperature difference could be due to application of the thermal-paste. Its more like draw.
If we see the price difference (don't search in eBay, many of them are fake) Ultra 5+ has the upper hand for its lower price but again availability is a major issue, specially in India.
The Positives:
- Excellent thermal conductivity.
- Not electrically conductive. No extra headache while installation.
- Doesn't degrade over time.
- Great value for money.
The Negatives(as a quality of the paste there is no negative) :
- There is no distributor/reseller of OCZ in India, so, availability is totally zero except grey-market but that also fill with duplicates.
- Syringe looks big but has just 3gm.
- OCZ releases only 3gm pack, unlike Arctic Silver 5 which comes both in 3.5gm and 12gm pack. 3gm pack is more than enough for a single/home user but not enough for System Engineers and Moders. For them, a bigger pack of 12gm would be helpful as well as economy.
- The syringe is totally opaque type. So, there is no way to know how much paste left after a long use. Not even holding in front of the Sun works.
- according to a forum - 'it tastes awful', but we didn't test that.
Final Ratings
| Installation | 7 / 10 |
| Overclocking | 8 / 10 |
| Value of Money | 9 / 10 |
| Overall | 8 / 10 |
