I wonder how much of that reputation is based on absolute power consumption, and how much comes from the relative huge jump from preceding Pentium III's. Checking from ARK, when looking at mainstream models the first gen P4's consumed 60ish watts which grew to 85ish watts in the end (precott). That sounds pretty much in line with all the CPUs that followed. But it was radical rise from the <30ish watts that PIIIs consumed. Of course the top of the line P4s were even more hotter (in the 115-130 watt range) but that is actually also still in line with more recent CPUs. It's just less visible as Intel in their great wisdom has limited the top models to server Xeons and thus out of the hands of consumers.