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> My Mac uses almost an order of magnitude less power than the PC and I keep the PC powered off.

Either you are not measuring power consumption correctly, or there is something very wrong with your PC.

I believe they're saying they keep it powered off because it uses a magnitude more power.

And it's an entirely believable statement. A Mac Mini uses between 5w - 20w. Many PCs idle at >50W, and under use hit 500W+.

Perhaps, but those would be the very different PCs. Also while exist, 500W+ desktops are rare, and their performance are not comparable to Mac Minis.

That's not a fair comparison. We should be comparing Mac Mini to NUCs if power consumption is the relevant factor. Plenty of NUCs are rated for 15w.

And those NUCs don’t match the performance.

Or it's an AMD desktop. Their chiplet design really isn't good for idle power.

Seriously, even when doing nothing whatsoever (and cores themselves idling at 1.3W) the package is taking 20W.

Disable memory overclock or undervolt the memory and SoC. You will see the power drop down like crazy.