Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): 1766451605
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): NixOS
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
• Steam Logs: Please request again if truly needed, its hard for me to get stuff off the laptop on which I ran the repro.
• GPU: Intel integrated on Laptop, AMD dedicated on desktop

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Steam when idle and offscreen uses additional extra power continuously and consistently. I would like steam to not use as much power when not actively used. Ideally when invisible it should not consume any additional power at all. On a laptop an extra 0.5W means quite a lot. On my desktop computer the power difference from steam idling in the background is more like 10W, which means that a computer with steam running in the background all the time costs an extra 10 euro/year that I would rather spend on a game instead ;)

Steps for reproducing this issue:

I attempted to isolate the problem as much as possible. I grabbed an older intel laptop and ran only steam as well as profiling tools on it. The laptop is running on battery power using the powersaving governor.

The power consumption on the laptop right after boot with power just the profiling tools (powertop, turbostat) running is:

1. powertop: "The battery reports a discharge rate of 2.6 to 2.8W"
2. turbostat: "PkgWatt=0.19,CorrWatt=0.6,GFXWatt=0.00,RAMWatt=0.51,SysWatt=0.41"

Then I ran (logged out) steam, moved it offscreen (a different workspace) and left it be there for a couple minutes to let it settle.

At that point the power consumption is:

1. powertop: "The battery reports a discharge rate of 3.3W"
2. turbostat: "PkgWatt=0.6,CorWatt=0.29,GFXWatt=0.01,RamWatt=0.56,SysWatt=1.28"

I then logged in, opened Divinity 2 Original Sin from my library, moved steam offscreen and left it there for a couple minutes to settle. There are no games installed and no updates to do.

1. powertop: "The battery reports a discharge rate of 3.3W"
2. turbostat: "PkgWatt=0.71,CorWatt=0.2, GFXWatt=0.02,RAMWatt=0.55,SysWatt=1.19"

Powertop further shows significant wakeups produced by steam and various steamwebhelper processes. Here's an strace from one of the steamwebhelper processes:

# strace -tt -p $EXPENSIVE_STEAM_THREAD
HH:MM:SS.226540 sendto(48, "\10\0\0\0h\0\0\0\30\0\24\0\0\0\0\0\200r\230\2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 104, MSG_NOSIGNAL, NULL, 0) = 104
HH:MM:SS.226559 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.226570 poll([{fd=18, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}], 3, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
HH:MM:SS.226580 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.226588 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.226596 poll([{fd=18, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}], 3, 6) = 1 ([{fd=41, revents=POLLIN}])
HH:MM:SS.227833 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.227852 read(41, "!", 2)        = 1
HH:MM:SS.227867 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.227877 poll([{fd=18, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}], 3, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
HH:MM:SS.227886 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.227895 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.227903 poll([{fd=18, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}], 3, 5) = 0 (Timeout)
HH:MM:SS.232969 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.232991 sendto(48, "\10\0\0\0h\0\0\0\30\0\24\0\0\0\0\0\201r\230\2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 104, MSG_NOSIGNAL, NULL, 0) = 104
HH:MM:SS.233008 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.233018 poll([{fd=18, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}], 3, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
HH:MM:SS.233028 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.233037 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.233048 poll([{fd=18, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}], 3, 6) = 1 ([{fd=41, revents=POLLIN}])
HH:MM:SS.233245 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.233254 read(41, "!", 2)        = 1
HH:MM:SS.233266 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.233275 poll([{fd=18, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}], 3, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
HH:MM:SS.233284 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.233294 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.233302 poll([{fd=18, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}], 3, 5) = 0 (Timeout)
HH:MM:SS.238365 recvmsg(18, {msg_namelen=0}, 0) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
HH:MM:SS.238380 sendto(48, "\10\0\0\0h\0\0\0\30\0\24\0\0\0\0\0\202r\230\2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 104, MSG_NOSIGNAL, NULL, 0) = 104