I think the issue is that you might equate the TDP with power consumption and think that a particular chip is more efficient than another. Or that a smaller PSU would be sufficient. I would have expected a motherboard set to "auto" would use the Intel spec to hit the advertised TDP, not max everything out and end up at 3x that until it had to thermally throttle.

I think both Intel and the motherboard manufacturers are to blame: Intel for using a marketing number that won't be hit under most configurations, and the motherboard manufacturers for having over-agressive and unexpected defaults.