Leaning heavily towards the Lattepanda Mu with Intel N100, but also considering the Raspberry Pi 5 compute module as an alternative. Main reason for the preference is performance. But does that still hold up if passively cooled? I’ve read that the N100 doesn’t really reach its full potential at its 6 W TDP, instead often drawing around 15 W during benchmarks. All of the benchmarks I’ve come across are for an actively-cooled setup.

I’m planning on a heatsink that will be open to ambient air and not much larger than the compute module itself, maybe 6x12x1 cm. How much do those extra watts beyond the TDP matter to the performance of an Intel CPU?