The Intel Core i7-5960X was a desktop processor with 8 cores, launched in September 2014. It is part of the Core i7 Extreme lineup, using the Haswell-E architecture with Socket 2011-3. Thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading the core-count is effectively doubled, to 16 threads. Core i7-5960X has 20 MB of L3 cache and operates at 3 GHz by default, but can boost up to 3.5 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is building the Core i7-5960X on a 22 nm production process using 2,600 million transistors. You may freely adjust the unlocked multiplier on Core i7-5960X, which simplifies overclocking greatly, as you can easily dial in any overclocking frequency.
With a TDP of 140 W, the Core i7-5960X consumes a lot of power, so good cooling is definitely needed. Intel's processor supports DDR4 memory with a quad-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 2133 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. For communication with other components in the system, Core i7-5960X uses a PCI-Express Gen 3 connection. This processor does not have integrated graphics, you will need a separate graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the Core i7-5960X, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Additionally, IOMMU virtualization (PCI passthrough) is supported, so that guest virtual machines may directly use host hardware. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, Intel is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.