 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. 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. What it doesn't have compared to the new dual 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 GHz, 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, or 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 our Intel warranty card, installation instructions, and Intel inside 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. We'll have a look at that later. And a heat sink. Now I can't believe how wussy Intel has made these heat sinks. I mean, like seriously, for reference, here's the heat sink 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 low end Core i5s and i3s that come with this heat sink is to just grab an aftermarket heat sink. Just grab a cheap one, like an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2. It's a great little heat sink and it will outperform 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 heat sink 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 heat sink. 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 1,156 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 H55 motherboards. Now the biggest difference between an H55 and a P55 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 or a 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 H55 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 i3s and Core i5 dual cores. Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Core i3 540.