Must Read: No niche for iPad: Why I returned mine

Topic: Hardware

Photos: building a Sandy Bridge PC

Summary: We needed a testbed PC running Intel's latest-generation Core i7 processor, so we built our own. Here's how it turned out.

Manek Dubash

By Manek Dubash |

 |  Image 2 of 11

Inside the unassuming shell of Intel's 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K, which has four cores and an 8MB cache, is a brand-new architecture, the second to be introduced on Intel's 32nm manufacturing process after Westmere. Sandy Bridge is the latest 'tock' in Intel's 'tick-tock' CPU development process. It includes Hyper-Threading, which enables multiple threads to run on each CPU core and so improves overall performance on threaded software, and a new version of Turbo Boost, which allows all cores to overclock simultaneously for ten to twenty seconds if the chip was previously running cool. The Core i7-2600K will boost to 3.8GHz, if doing so will not overheat the chip.

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Topics: Hardware, Reviews

Manek Dubash

About Manek Dubash

Editor, journalist, analyst, presenter and blogger.


As well as blogging and writing news & features here on ZDNet, I work as a cloud analyst with STL Partners, and write for a number of other news and feature sites.


I also provide research and analysis services, video and audio production, white papers, event photography, voiceovers, event moderation, you name it...


Back story
An IT journalist for 25+ years, I worked for Ziff-Davis UK for almost 10 years on PC Magazine, reaching editor-in-chief. Before that, I worked for a number of other business & technology publications and was published in national and international titles.

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  • Update: We will, of course, be keeping an eye out for the SATA II bug in this system's P67 (Cougar Point) chipset
    Charles McLellan
    Reply Vote
  • Jeez thats a massive heatsink lol! Typical of a big company like Intel to make such a small error :(
    themanunderyourbed@...
    Reply Vote
  • The heatsink IS pretty big, especially for a 95W part, but it'll cope easily when this extreme version of the chip is computing flat-out.
    Manek Dubash
    Reply Vote
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