The processor arrived today, less than 24 hours after placing the order - you've gotta love Amazon Prime! As you can see, the box isn't very large, and inside there are two main pieces of kit: the processor itself and a heatsink/fan unit.
 |
| The processor, all boxed up |
 |
| Intel Core i3 |
 |
| Heatsink/fan (bottom side) |
 |
| Heatsink/fan (top side) |
The processor we chose is an Intel Core i3. To be precise, the i3-2100. It's part of Intel's family of processors called
Sandy Bridge, which hit the shelves in 2011. We need to be careful handling it, so in the photo it's still in its protective case. If you're wondering how big it is, about 4cm square.
Remember what we said about
fans and heat? Well, it's the processor where a lot of that heat comes from, so it has its very own fan. Not only that, but it has a heatsink too (bottom left in the photos). The three black stripes in the middle are called "thermal paste" - they will stick the heatsink to the processor and it's important not to touch them, so for the moment we've left the heatsink in its protective pacakge. The heatsink "spreads" the heat away from the processor and then the fan will get rid of it completely.
This processor is rated at 65 Watts - remember our
power supply was 430 Watts so that's OK for the moment. And finally, remember our
mobo had a 1155 socket for the processor? The gold parts of the processor that you can see are in fact hundreds of tiny electrical contacts - 1155 of them altogether! Perhaps there is some sense to this geek-speak after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment