The Intel Xeon E3-1280 v5 was a server/workstation processor with 4 cores, launched in October 2015, at an MSRP of $612. It is part of the Xeon E3 lineup, using the Skylake-DT architecture with Socket 1151. Thanks to Intel Hyper-Threading the core-count is effectively doubled, to 8 threads. Xeon E3-1280 v5 has 8 MB of L3 cache and operates at 3.7 GHz by default, but can boost up to 4 GHz, depending on the workload. Intel is building the Xeon E3-1280 v5 on a 14 nm production process using 1,750 million transistors. The multiplier is locked on Xeon E3-1280 v5, which limits its overclocking capabilities.
With a TDP of 80 W, the Xeon E3-1280 v5 consumes a good deal of power, so decent cooling is needed. Intel's processor supports DDR4 memory with a dual-channel interface. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the machine, Xeon E3-1280 v5 uses a PCI-Express Gen 3 connection. This processor lacks integrated graphics, you might need a graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the Xeon E3-1280 v5, 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.