The newest iteration of the PlayStation 3 boasted, among other things, a significant reduced thermal envelope compared to the older models. This led to speculation about how and why, with most fingers pointing towards the 90nm CPU. Rumors abounded and seemed quite plausible that the reason for the drop in power was a switch from a 90nm CPU to the 65nm Cell, which has already been in production for quite some time.
That's not the case, or at least that's not the case according to Sony. They claim that other components in the console were replaced with more energy efficient ones, leading to an overall power reduction. While we all know not to take Sony's claims at face value, this does mean that perhaps future iterations of the PS3 will feature a 65nm CPU and have an even lower power demand.
Even still, as the CPU is the most power hungry component of the PS3 and the power consumption dropped by a massive 65W, it does bring to mind what components they were able to substitute and whether or not the components altered the cost to manufacture a PS3.