Intel Core i3 6100T 2-core LGA 1151

A 35W Skylake dual-core that's fine for a budget server and painful for everything else. At USD 30 it's a maybe, at USD 163 it's a scam.

The single-thread score of 1854 lands right around the middle of the pack, so basic browsing and light office work feel okay. Multi-thread is where it falls apart, 3635 puts it near the bottom third of CPUs we track. The 3MB of L3 cache and DDR4 support help a little, but don't expect this thing to chew through video encodes or heavy multitasking. The HD Graphics 530 iGPU is fine for a display output and not much else.

Against a Ryzen 5 5500, this i3 gets embarrassed in every metric that matters. The 5500 has six cores, twelve threads, and modern IPC for not much more money on the used market. The Dell Xeon E5-2637 V2 is another old chip but at least brings more cache and server pedigree if you're building a cheap homelab. The be quiet! and Thermal Grizzly entries in our competitor list are coolers, not CPUs, so they're not really a fair fight. If you need LGA 1151 specifically, this is a cheap drop-in, but otherwise there are better old chips for similar cash.

Pricing is all over the place. US listings run from USD 30 to USD 163, and the cheaper end is the only reason to consider this chip. At USD 30 it's a fine spare or NAS brain. At USD 163 you're getting robbed, go buy a used Ryzen instead. The CAD 475 and EUR 524 listings are absurd for a decade-old dual-core, ignore those entirely.

The Core i3-6100T is a low-power Skylake chip that made sense in 2015 and mostly doesn't now. It sips 35W, comes with a cooler, and will happily run a home server or office box without breaking a sweat. But with two cores and four threads at 3.2GHz, it's a relic for anything beyond basic tasks. Our database puts it at 37.8 out of 100 overall, which tells you this is a budget stopgap, not a real upgrade.

If you're looking to game, edit video, or run any modern productivity workload, this isn't it. Go get a used Ryzen 5 5500 or a newer i3 instead. You'll spend a bit more and get several times the performance.

Buy it only if you find it under USD 40 and you need a low-power LGA 1151 chip for a basic NAS, HTPC, or office box. For anything else, save your money and get a used Ryzen 5 5500 or even a newer i3. This is a nostalgia purchase, not a performance one.