Steam Deck shipped two months ago, and it’s gotten a lot better since then, but the news that’s possible this week is probably the best it’s been all along: because the biggest problem with this portable gaming PC has finally been solved. Yes, it’s the fan.
When Deck was introduced, it was equipped with a very noisy fan to cool its AMD Zen 2 and RDNA 2 chips, and many users were plagued by fan volume and noise from day one. It always works even without doing anything to the system, and it always accelerates even in relatively lightweight games.
Worse, it will make a whining sound. Or at least some Steam Decks have this problem. The Reddit community found that the Deck actually released by the V Society actually contained one of two different fans: one made by Delta and the other made for Huaying.
Deck owners with Delta fans complain the most about the noise. V declined to comment on the fan’s choice. iFixit, a distributor of electronics repair supplies and parts, also said that it is not clear whether users can change to a better fan when there are replacement parts.
But this week, V did take a big step toward improving it with a beta software update. When the system is on standby, the fan no longer boots. The system now remains completely quiet when not in operation and use until you start using Steam Deck to play games or download them.
At the same time, the fan acceleration is not as fast as before. the maximum speed of the fan now requires the system to exceed 65 degrees celsius. however, this also brings a problem, that is, the fan is hotter before reaching the maximum speed.
But none of these fixes addressed the fan’s noise problem that caused a “whining” sound. On a Steam Deck equipped with a Delta fan, the fan will still sound like an airplane engine when it starts.
Smart players from Reddit have found that solving this problem is actually very simple. The first to be found was to remove noise by pressing the back of the Steam Deck near the sign. The players then took the Steam Deck apart and used electrical tape to thicken a part of the back shell to solve the problem in the same way.
Verge editors tested it themselves and found it to be really useful. But when he asked the V Society if doing so would affect the machine’s operation, the V Society said they did not recommend it for players. Lawrence Yang of V News said: We don’t recommend changing the airflow path because we don’t know how this affects heat dissipation.
In the test, players on Reddit and the editor did not see a significant temperature difference.