Intel Pentium G3460 socket: LGA 1150

What the Pentium G3460 is

The Pentium G3460 is the top clocked Haswell Pentium for LGA 1150 towers on LGA 1150. Intel set two cores and two threads at 3.5 GHz with 3 MB of Smart Cache. Power stays at 53 W on 22 nm from July 2014. It leads the G3450 by 100 MHz with no change in cooler or board needs.

Top Pentium clocks help single thread tasks that never leave two threads. Point of sale, office and classroom apps feel direct. Cache size over Celeron trims reloads in large documents. Buyers who need threads for exports should still step to Core i3, since clocks alone do not add parallelism.

Intel HD Graphics for 4th Generation drives office monitors without a card. DDR3 memory in dual channel to 32 GB feeds cores and graphics. The G3460 is the fastest locked Pentium of its season for buyers who want simple speed without tuning.

Socket and motherboard compatibility

The G3460 drops into LGA 1150 on 8 series chipsets including H81, B85, H87 and Z87, and on 9 series chipsets including H97 and Z97. Haswell support is native on both, so most boards run it from shipping BIOS. Verify the maker support entry for late production boards with newer firmware.

The 75 mm square mount suits stock and tower coolers. The CPU cooler compatibility by socket guide covers fit. Processors for LGA 1151 never fit this socket despite similar holes. The Socket vs chipset: what decides whether a CPU works guide details series limits.

Value H81 boards with two DIMMs are enough for this class. B85 adds ports for fleet use. Z boards add tuning that this locked chip cannot use.

Memory, PCIe and cooling

Memory is DDR3-1333 and 1600 class across two channels to 32 GB. Eight gigabytes with an SSD is the sweet spot for office images. Two sticks keep graphics bandwidth up for meetings. ECC can work on business boards where wired.

Sixteen lanes of PCIe 3.0 from the CPU feed one graphics or I/O slot. Most G3460 PCs use integrated video. Chipset lanes add SATA, USB and networking. Board manuals show slot sharing with M.2 adapters on 9 series models.

Boxed 53 W cooling is enough at 3.5 GHz in towers with decent vents. Low profile 53 W units suit slim cases. Keep the socket area free of tall heatsinks for easy fan clips.

Upgrade paths

Within the socket the Intel Core i3-4150 at 3.5 GHz with four threads matches clocks while adding Hyper-Threading for multitasking. The Intel Core i3-4360 at 3.7 GHz with HD Graphics 4600 adds threads plus stronger graphics. Both reuse DDR3 and LGA 1150 boards.

A DDR4 build needs a new socket and board. The G3460 covers budget towers where the fastest Pentium clocks meet the brief.