I think it entirely depends on your use case and hardware. I have a rack server, I need the extra power relatively frequently, as well as the 16x 2.5" bays and the 4 NICs. A rack server is a fairly power efficient package to get all those features in. However, it means that I am limited to discrete graphics, as Xeons don't have Intel QSV. There's also no monitor connected, and no 3D rendering happening, so the card is gonna idle at >5W and probably only use 20-30W while transcoding. Compared to a system that's idling at ~250W that's nothing.