Gadgetory

so with the release of the new core i3 and Core i5 dual core processors Intel has made their product line potentially one of the most confusing out there today but I'm going to try and clear that up a little bit so today I've got the i3 540 so this is the faster of the two i3s that are available at launch and what the i3 540 is is it's very similar to the socket 1156 core i7s and core i5s with a couple key differences first of all an i3 500 series is a dual core processor with hyper threading okay so it has four logical processors even though it only has two physical processors this actually provides some real-world benefit in terms of any sort of multi-threaded tasks that you're going to be performing like video editing stuff like that okay what it doesn't have compared to the new dual core Core i5 600 series is turbo boost and turbo boost is an incredibly important feature for the core I series processors because it takes that stock frequency which in this case is 3.06 gigahertz and in some case it boosts it up as much as three speed bins depending what you're doing with the processor okay so that's one reason to go for a core i5 500 series versus an i3 are sorry 600 series versus an i3 500 series now when you step up to the core i5 700 series the difference you're looking at is you lose hyper-threading but you gain two physical cores so that's a quad core processor so even though it doesn't have hyper threading it's a much faster multi-threaded machine compared to the core i5 600 series which are dual cores with hyper-threading and compared to the core i3 I think I've rambled enough now I think the point should be pretty much this the core i3 is a core series processor that has hyper-threading but no turbo boost okay there we go let's just open this thing and be done with it okay so inside we're going to find hard Intel warranty card installation instructions and intense logo label so there's your little core i3 sticker that you want to stick on your case or wherever it is you want to put it then inside we will also find a cpu I'll have a look at that later and a heatsink now I can't believe how wisi intel has made these heat sinks I mean like seriously for reference here's the heatsink on a 5750 like a low-end video card you look at that that's like the same size pretty much might even be bigger on the video card so I mean something that I've recommended to a lot of customers who are buying a low end core i5s and i3s that come with this heatsink is to just grab an aftermarket heating just got a cheap one like an Arctic cooling freezer 7 programs - it's a great little heatsink and it'll perform this especially if you want to do overclocking now that's not to be down on the Intel engineering team because a big part of why you can use such a small heatsink on this processor is because it is so efficient it uses very little power it outputs very little heat and it will not die under the cooling of this little tiny fan heatsink it's just that if you want the best temperatures and again if you are overclocking or pushing the limits of your processor then you want to make sure that you throw some better cooling on it that's all so here you can see the core i3 itself like I said before this is a socket 1156 chip or LGA 1156 I should say so that means that on the bottom of the chip you'll find 1156 little pads that will make contact with your motherboard okay now also launching with the core i3 and the new core i5 dual cores are the age 55 motherboards now the biggest difference okay between an H 55 and a P 55 is support for onboard video but the onboard video is not actually on the motherboard it's on this chip so the new dual cores all have integrated video processing units right under the heat spreader there so that means that if you take a core i3 or a new Core i5 dual core and you install it on a p55 board it will work but the p55 board won't have support for the integrated graphics chip that is on this processor so you won't actually have a VGA port to plug your monitor into our DVI port or whatever else you need likewise if you take a core i7 1156 chip or a core i5 quad core and plug it into an H 55 board you'll have those ports on the back of the motherboard like a DVI port but you won't actually have a graphics processor on the CPU to drive it so it won't actually work so that's another tidbit that is really interesting about the new core i3 and Core i5 dual cores thank you for checking out my unboxing of the core i3 540