Steambox Part 3 – Installing Windows 8.1 and General System Performance

System Power Consumption

One of the things I was looking forward to with the Windows build on the Steambox is power consumption. I was really curious as to how the systems, or operating systems rather, would handle the power savings features of the Intel Haswell processor. When I tested the Steambox with the SteamOS installed, all of the power savings features were enabled within the GIGABYTE B85M-DS3H UEFI BIOS, nothing was changed between the builds either. Though sitting idle, the Steambox with the SteamOS installed was pulling 55 Watts at the wall. Under the same conditions, the Steambox with Windows 8.1 installed was pulling only 46 Watts at the wall. This is a pretty significant difference, just over a 16% drop from the SteamOS. While playing a little bit of Metro Last Light, both of the operating systems were pulling 120 Watts at the wall.