You're falling into the "TDP is power input" trap.. TDP and power input are not the same. You can have a chip that takes less power to operate at a TDP equivalent to another chip which takes more power to operate.

Edit: There is no way that 100% of output power in a CPU is thermal, else it would be nothing but a very expensive heater. Also, CPUs do not operate in a closed environment, like those replying to me here seem to think.

What the article is pointing out that TDP is thermal design power. Meaning a nameplate value that was targeted for "standard" operation, even though the processor can do higher. So if something has a TDP of 100W, yet the heatsink can maintain proper operating temperature while dissipating 150W, then the processor might sit there drawing (and dissipating) 150W the whole time.

As an aside, I really wish CPU cooler manufacturer/reviews would start simply stating the thermal resistance - basically the single number that characterizes its effectiveness. I know it would undermine the dog and pony show of building a test system with so-and-so's motherboard etc running benchmarks, but the entire goal of science is to weed out the extraneous narrative.

No shit. The trap is thinking that all output power is thermal (it's not).

There's also this: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle) if you want some light reading.

It's probably fairly neglible though, probables less than a watt in most systems.