PSU Why the hell does my computer use up so much power?

The quads don't have as aggressive power management as some other Intel CPUs. If you switch to a 45nm part that would help some. You might be able to find a "low voltage" CPU intended fro the embedded market, but I don't know how well they overclock.
Speedstep is also a good place to start and making sure you have the C1E halt state enabled in BIOS. I can't think of them off the top of my head, but yopu should be able to find a utility to manually set the CPU's speedstep speed.
Stand by/S3 really is a better way to go, but you will see more than the 12w draw when the system is in stand by. Remember that every thing you would want to be able to wake the system will need to have some power to it. So WoL requires the NIC to be powered, wake from USB requires the controllers to get power, etc. Each device should have a power management tab in the device manager if you are running Windows.

That 12w 'off' power number seems odd to me. In standby, there is a 5v rail active, but IIRC, it should be about 1A meaning 5W max. It might be worth trying a different PSU if you have one you can try for free just to see what happens.

Good old AT sustems used to have a switch that disconnected them from mains power when you turned them off. Zero power usage when off. Now we have these ATX PSUs, that's progress for you

 

ATX PSUs that more often than not come with a power switch...

On a side note, that's actually one of the things I'm making sure of when looking for a new PSU. If it doesn't have a power switch I won't consider it.

 

My UPS has a readout telling me my system draw - currently with two systems (my outgoing gaming rig and my new server) and an LCD plugged in (24in) I'm drawing 124w at not QUITE idle on the gaming rig. Not sure why you're drawing quite so much unless the 8800s are huge hogs even at idle.

 

I've been wondering if there was a viable way to use the heat from my soon to be liquid cooled rig to keep my Iguana in the next room warm . I was thinking of putting holes in the wall and running the radiator in the other room

 

I've considered heating my tropical fish tank with the output of water cooling before. The problem then is that your PC is tied to a tank, annoying when it comes to LAN parties!

 

Sounds like you have an inefficient PSU, I had similar sort of numbers, infact near 1k due to having and old OCZ psu which was <60% efficient.

might be worth checking your parents lighting, my missus bought some fancy uplighters for our house that whilst cheap and pretty consumed 350w each and were pretty much on all the time course it was my 45w mediaPC that was to blame

 

Turn the pc off when your not using it? Even if I'm only leaving for 10 - 15 minutes, i'll turn it off.