Intel Stock Thermal Compound Review

Conclusions

The original compound is a high-quality one, and it comes optimally applied. None of the compounds we tested performed better than the stock compound; in some cases, good products had worse performance than the stock compound.

Note that the comparative performance between the retail thermal compounds was not the same as in our Thermal Compound Roundup – May 2011 review. This is not an issue, but rather a characteristic of the cooler we used. Actually, the stock cooler doesn’t have the same pressure as the cooler we used on the previous comparison. It seems logical that thermal compounds with different viscosities behave differently under varying pressure conditions.

The test results are crystal clear. There is no point in wiping off the thermal compound that comes preapplied on the Intel stock cooler and replacing it with a different compound, at least when using a mainstream CPU.