I'm in the x86 camp myself (apu2e4 is my main router). I just ran some tests on my N5105 4xI226 2.5Gbe box running SNAPSHOT bare metal, and observed the following power numbers:
- Idle ~8.9w with active WAN + one sleeping LAN connection (this number is typical, I look at it many times every day).
- Woke LAN workstation, 9.1w.
- Started htop on router, power jumped to ~9.5-9.6 w.
- Started https://waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat test and saw ~14.0-14.4 w during download.
- Dropped to ~10.5-11.0 w during upload phase.
- When bufferbloat test ended (A+, of course) power dropped back to 9.5.
- htop shows load "0.0" the whole time, so bufferbloat traffic isn't stressing things at all.
- Kill htop, power back at 9.1.
The box is one of the CWWK "v5" (I think, minimal case, no fan), cost US$140 + $13 shipping (took a month from CN to US). The box is new, so I splurged on new internals rather than going the junk pile for parts: WD 550 SSD was $37 (250GB so MASSIVE overkill for OpenWrt), Crucial 8GB 3200CL22 SODIMM stick $28 (again massive overkill), total $218. Could get that down a bit by using a salvaged -- or buying a much smaller -- SSD, and scavenging a RAM stick from an old laptop or whatever.