Intel Core i3 540 CPU LGA1156 Dual Core Processor Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
921 words · ~4 min read
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so with the release of the new core I3 and core i5 dual core processors Intel
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has made their product line potentially one of the most confusing out there
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today but I'm going to try and clear that up a little bit so today I've got
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the I3 540 so this is the faster of the two i3s that are available at launch and
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what the I3 540 is is it's very similar
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to the socket 1156 core i7s and core i5s
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with a couple key differences first of all an i
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3500 series is a dual core processor
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with hyperthreading okay so it has four
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logical processors even though it only has two physical processors this
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actually provides some real world benefit in terms of any sort of
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multi-threaded tasks that you're going to be performing like video editing
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stuff like that okay what it doesn't have compared to the new dual core Core
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i5 600 series is turbo boost and turbo
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boost is an incredibly important feature for the core I series processors because
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it takes that stock frequency which in this case is 3.06 GHz and in some case
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it boosts it up as much as three speed bins depending what you're doing with
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the processor okay so that's one reason to go for a core i5 500 series versus an
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I3 or sorry 600 series versus an I3 500
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series now when you step up to the Core i5700 Series the difference you're
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looking at is you lose hyperth threading but you gain two physical cores so
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that's a quad core processor so even though it doesn't have hyperthreading
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it's a much faster multi-threaded
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machine compared to the Core i5 600 series which are dual cores with
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hyperthreading and compared to the core I3 I think I've rambled enough now I
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think the point should be pretty much
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this the core I3 is a Core Series
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processor that has hyperthreading but no
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turbo boost okay there we go let's just open this thing and be done with it okay
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so inside we're going to find our Intel warranty card installation instructions
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and Intel Inside logo label so there's your little core I3 sticker that you
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want to stick on your case or wherever it is you want to put it then inside we
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will also find a CPU we'll have a look at that later and a heat sink now I
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can't believe how wussy Intel has made these heat sinks I mean like seriously
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for reference here's the heat sink on a
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on a 5750 like low-end video card you look at
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that that's like the same size pretty much might even be bigger on the video
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card so I mean something that I've recommended to a lot of customers who
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are buying uh low-end core i5s and i3s
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that come with this heat sink is to just grab an aftermarket heat sink just grab
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a cheap one like an Arctic cooling freezer 7 Pro rev 2 it's a great little
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heat sink and it'll outperform this especially if you want to do overclocking now that's not to be down
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on the Intel engineering team because a big part of why you can use such a small
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heat sink on this processor is because it is so efficient it uses very little
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power it outputs very little heat and it will not die under the cooling of this
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little tiny fan heat sink it's just that if you want the best temperatures and
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again if you are overclocking or pushing the limits of your processor then you
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want to make sure that you throw some better cooling on it that's all so here
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you can see the core I3 itself like I said before this is a socket 1156 chip
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or LGA 1156 I should say so that means
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that on the bottom of the ship you'll find 1,156 little pads that will make contact
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with your motherboard okay now also launching with the core I3 and the new
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Core i5 dual cores are the h55 motherboards now the biggest difference
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okay between an h55 and a p55 is support
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for Onboard video but the Onboard video
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is not actually on the motherboard it's on this chip so the new dual cores all
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have integrated video processing units right
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under the heat spreader there so that means that if you take a core I3 or a
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new Core i5 dual core and you install it on a p55 board it will work but the p-55
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board won't have support for the integrated Graphics chip that is on this
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processor so you won't actually have a VGA port to plug your monitor into or a
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DVI port or whatever else you need likewise if you take a core i7 1156 chip
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or a core i5 quad core and plug it into an h55 board you'll have those ports on
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the back of the motherboard like a DVI port but you won't actually have a
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graphics processor on the CPU to drive it so it won't actually work so that's
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another tidbit that is really interesting about the new core i3s and
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core i5 dual course thank you for checking out my unboxing of the core I3
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540