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I don't see how a computer running 100% or running 2% (idle) are any different on power input. My power supply is still pulling in the same amount regardless. WCG or not, I never shut my computer off and never put it in any stand by or power save (because no computer ever seems to reliably recover from those).


Noise & Power benchmarks from Anantech on a few recent Core 2 systems showing the difference between idle, 100% CPU, and also GPU. It's about 40w difference for the Core 2, and worse for older processors. This shows a Pentium Extreme edition using up 76w more power when running at 100% compared to idle. A power supply for any device only pulls the necessary power requested by the components inside. If a processor goes into an idle states, portions of it have no power flowing through the transistors, and the CPU isn't trying to pull as much power. Modern processors not only have an idle and active state, but they have several steps they can take to reduce power usage even during light CPU usage.

As far as the power saving modes, my media center system and my laptop both enter and exit sleep mode just fine many times between actual reboots. Though that may have something to do with the OS, since OS X runs on both.