Are E5-xxxxL (low power/embedded) CPUs worth the extra money to save on electricity?

[plidosir]

I understand TDP doesn't fully relate to power usage, and that idle power is what really matters.

So I'm wondering if the L variants of E5 Xeons are worth the money or not if I'm looking at minimizing power consumption (and noise)?

For context, an E5-2630v4 has a TDP of 85W for 10 cores while an E5-2630Lv4 has a TDP of 55W for 14 cores. But the 2630 costs 25$ while the 2630L is 60$.

Will I ever make the price difference with power savings or is it not worth it if you're not pegging the CPU at 100% load 24/7?

 

[i386]

If I rember it correctly the cpus with the "L" suffix are power consumption limited on the top end, not on the lower end. Cpus from the same generation idle around the same numbers (usually the differences are so low that they could be the tolerancces of your kill-a-watt device, check the spec/datasheet)

Edit: so no, you probably won't save anything witth these cpus

 

[RolloZ170]

Will I ever make the price difference with power savings or is it not worth it if you're not pegging the CPU at 100% load 24/7?

the Ls are just TDP limited for servers with limited cooling capabilities.
if you can reduce TDP WITH THE BIOS i.e. disable turbo boost you are better with 2630v4 - in the case the motherboard supports(not block) 85W !!!!

 

[RolloZ170]

I understand TDP doesn't fully relate to power usage, and that idle power is what really matters.

different socket but a good example:
have a Lenovo M720q with pentium gold G5600 (54W TDP)
the G5600 draws 28Watts (HWinfo package power) under CinebenchR20 load (@3,9Ghz)