it was new to me... I went wtf?


Nice analysis, the thought I'd like to add is that even if you had the most possibly efficient x11 implementation and it still runs cooler than, say, scrypt, then you should still prefer scrypt over x-whatever. If the most optimized implementation is cooler, you are wasting power in keeping all the system working compared to scrypt, so you get a worst "network security / watt spent" ratio.