The proportional plus integral(PI) feedback control manner has been used in many general industrial fields such as refrigeration system because of its simple design process and favorable control performance. This paper deals with optimized PI controller design of the refrigeration system based on evaluation functions such as integrated absolute error(IAE). The suggested optimal PI gains can be easily calculated by a simple program and the optimal controllability satisfying the evaluation function can be assured. Furthermore, at the initial step of controller design, the suggested optimal gain is able to reflect some noise disturbances caused by an inverter which drives variable speed compressors. The validity of the suggested optimal gain is investigated by some simulations and experiments to verify its efficiency. From the results of comparing control performance between the optimal PI controller based on the evaluation function and the PI controller designed by the Matlab tuner which was known as the most popular gain tuner, the optimal PI controller showed more desirable control performance especially in transient responses.