Arctic Cooling MX-4 Thermal Paste Review

1. Introduction2. A Closer Look3. Testing Methodology and Performance4. Closing Thoughts5. View All Pages

To test the MX-4 paste we thought it appropriate to use Arctic Cooling's own Freezer Xtreme (Rev.2) CPU cooler.  To apply the thermal paste we used the dot method, allowing the cooler's pressure to spread the paste over the CPU.

The system we used for testing comprised of an Intel Core i7 920 CPU on an Asus P6T motherboard.

Test System

Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Processor: Intel Core i7 920
Motherboard: Asus P6T
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme (Rev.2)
Memory: 6GB (3x 2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 RAM
Storage: Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB 7200rpm (HD103SJ)
Power Supply: Corsair HX850W

Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Prime 95 (64-bit)
Everest Ultimate

Room temperatures were kept at an ambient 22c which mirrors realistic temperatures for a wide range of room environments. We left our test system idling on the desktop and after 30 minutes the idle temperatures were recorded. The CPU was then loaded for 30 minutes using Prime 95 and the load temperatures were recorded. The temperatures were recorded using Everest Ultimate and the displayed values were the average of the four cores.

Both the idle and load temperatures remained within a single degree of each other during all our tests which supports Arctic Cooling's claims of retaining the same impressive level of performance.  This single degree increase we noticed in a couple of our tests is a small compromise for the improvements Arctic Cooling have made elsewhere.

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