31W at idle? Thats more then three times the most recent Mac Mini idle consumption. What are these companies doing to turn a supposedly power efficient and friendly CPU/chipset/GPU into a design that idles worse then a system much more powerful?

It would be interesting to compare power usage playing the same video file between your ASRock and a new Mac Mini. I however lack a new Mac Mini to test with. Maximum power draw for these two systems isn't a good comparison, since the Mini is a much more capable box, and of course a higher price to pay for the higher computing power.

*edit* Anandtech has even more power numbers. While some of the Mini's efficiency appears to come from OS X, even idle under Windows 7 is way lower then the ASRock.