Hello everyone!

I'm starting to build my homelab and got my hands on two processors: an i5-8500 and an i5-8500T.
I always heard that the T series of processors had no difference in idle power draw to their non-T counterparts so I decided to put it to the test now that I have the oportunity.

I tested both processors with the same exact system:
Fujitsu D538/E85+ case/mobo/psu
32GB(2x16GB) DDR4 2666MHz
500GB Crucial P1 NVMe SSD
1TB Toshiba consumer hard drive
IOCrest 2.5GbE NIC
Running Proxmox VE without any VMs running.

Of course this is not science by any means but I liked testing it and will be useful to determine which one I'll keep/seek to buy in the future. The measurements were made on an Aubess Zigbee 20A EU Smart Plug.

Here you have the results:

i5-8500

i5-8500T

Zoomed out-graph

As you can see, the minimum wattage draw was the same at 13W, but the mean was slightly lower for the T series processor. The mean power draw fluctuated a lot more for the i5-8500, at around 14.5W to 16.5W, against the 14W to 15W for the i5-8500T.
If you want to be very precise to see which is going to be better for you, you should probably account the faster clock speeds of the i5-8500, which would allow it to run at idle for longer, but that really depends on your use case.

Again, this is not science but I think what I found in the tests was pretty cool and wanted to share it.

Have a good one!

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