Intel released the Alder Lake-N series processor in the first quarter of 2023. These chips employ the all-new Intel 7 process and integrate the same AV1 decoder found in the Iris Xe Graphics into its UHD iGPU. As a result, the Alder Lake-N series chips are a huge step forward from conventional entry-level Pentium chips in both performance and power-efficiency. Because of its excellent performance and affordable price, the Intel Processor N100 was one of the most popular solutions for Mini PCs in the last year.

 1. Test Design and Method

  Test Unit: To ensure the accuracy and reliability of the tests, we chose the Beelink Mini PC equipped with an Intel Processor N100. Specifically, we use the EQ12 model for our testing purposes (16GB DDR5-400MHz, 500GB PCIe Gen3*1 SSD). Both the EQ12 and MiniS 12 Pro models feature the Intel Processor N100 and have similar power and performance, making them ideal for our testing needs.

  Test Environment: The test unit uses the Windows 11 Pro OS. The tests are run in a controlled environment with an ambient temperature of 30 °C. 

2. TDP Settings

  We run the same benchmark tests on EQ12 at three different configured TDPs (10W, 15W, 20W) to see the impact of TDP on N100’s performance.

1^st Benchmark: AIDA64 Stability Test

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  Remark: Parameters being displayed as straight lines indicates that the performance of the CPU is stable without throttling. Otherwise, the performance is unstable.

2^nd Benchmark: Geekbench 6 CPU Test

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  Remark: Geekbench 6 CPU test is a cross-platform benchmark that measures your processor's single-core and multi-core power for everyday computing tasks.

3rd Benchmark: CPU-Z

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  Remark: CPU-Z is a benchmark for testing the single-core performance and multi-core performance of the CPU.

4^th Benchmark: Cinebench R23

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  Remark: Cinebench R23 is a Cinema 4D based CPU crunching test to measure the rendering computing power of the CPU.

3. Data Analysis

  As can be seen from the graphs of AIDA64, the frequency of the CPU increases as the TDP increases. Compared with the 10W TDP setting, the CPU frequency of 15W and 20W has been increased by 18.18% and 31.79%, respectively, indicating that the CPU performance improves with the increase of TDP. Understandably, the corresponding temperature also increases. Therefore, it is necessary to consider improving thermal management to maintain system stability. As can be seen from the above AIDA64 test diagrams, the Beelink EQ12 Mini PC can still maintain smooth operation even when the TDP is configured at the maximum of 20W.

  As can be seen in the Geekbench 6 scores above, the performance of the CPU benefits greatly from TDP increase. From 10W to 15W, the leaps in single-core score and multi-core score are 6.71% and 16.92% respectively. From 10W to 20W, we witness 9.24% improvement in single-core performance and an amazing 30.35% boost in multi-core performance.

  The CPU-Z test results show that both single-core and multi-core scores improve significantly when the TDP is raised from 10W to 15W. However, when the TDP is further raised to 20W, the improvement in single-core performance slows down, while the improvement in multi-core performance is still remarkable.