This probably depends more on what hardware is being used rather than the SoC itself. A bare RPi5 seems to idle around 3 W, which a bare N100 can absolutely (o

This probably depends more on what hardware is being used rather than the SoC itself. A bare RPi5 seems to idle around 3 W, which a bare N100 can absolutely (out)do (these are designed with S0ix/s2idle after all). If you add gigabit ethernet, you'll add 0.5 - 2 W (depending on the controller). If you add NVMe, you'll add 0-4 W - NVMe SSDs vary wildly in both their own power consumption and how they interact with CPU C-states and ASPM. Some SSDs prevent low C-states and thereby increase CPU power consumption a lot, for example (even in S0ix). This is generally true for every PCIe peripheral (including network controllers), but NVMe SSDs are popular troublemakers in this area. I honestly don't believe any of the "N100 idles at 15 W" numbers. First of all, that substantially exceeds the power limits of the N100, by like a factor of three. So clearly the vast majority of that power isn't being dissipated by the N100. Seeing how N100 boards generally have only one heatsinked component, the power is dissipated elsewhere. Second, people rarely post their exact hardware and how they measured this. "Idles at 15W [because there's a spinning hard drive attached]" is not very interesting. Third, many of the N100 boards have ATX power connectors, and if you use any old ATX power supply, that alone can cause such a number. Fourth, if you're using a cheap power meter, many of them are still wildly inaccurate at the low end. And, fifth, as a reality check, even much older 1L PCs using actual desktop platforms, even with separate chipsets and all that jazz, don't idle at 15 W. Unless you're using Windows, then, maybe. But Windows can't and shouldn't be the yard stick for power efficiency.