Justin
I am not sure I understood your blog entry. Are you saying that the SA120 alone with no drives draws 90 watts booting and 40 watts idle or did those numbers include other parts of the system?
FWIW, a supermicro SC813 with a X9SCL-F motherboard, an i3-2125, 8G ECC RAM and 3 x 2TB Seagate 7200 rpm drives draw 40 watts running NAS4Free with light load, 50 watts booting and I consider that marginally acceptable. Close to 100 watts just for the empty drive box with SAS multiplier sounds excessive.
I don't know what chan1wong1 is intending but I was considering the SA120 and power consumption / noise level are important factors.