Does your deck constantly overheat and restart?

[Litfuel]

I just got the deck last week and have issues with it seeming to get hot and restart itself in the middle of the game. It happened first with death stranding but after reading about it I assumed it was an issue with the game. But now if I play elden ring for more than 20 min (locked at 30fps mostly medium settings gpu load goes from 70-85%) the game freezes and the deck restarts. I assume it’s heat related as the fan is going and the back is warm to hot. Is this normal behavior or is this a defective deck?

This also happened with realistic battle simulator too but after I lowered its settings significantly it stopped.

[CJM]

Are you giving the deck enough airflow? I assume you are holding the device and running it with a room temperature below 72 degree Fahrenheit.

Could signal a defective battery. Defective batteries put off more heat while under load, and Death Stranding and Elden Ring are definitely heavy loads for the Steam Deck.

If you charge the battery to full, and run off of the AC adapter, does the issue persist?

[Litfuel]

I haven’t tried running it off AC adapter, will try that and report back. Yes on holding the device and room temperature is 74.

[Litfuel]

I tried running it off the AC and it now freezes on elden ring start up black screen. Doesn’t restart and is unresponsive. The only way to fix it was to hold down the power button. Once it was restarted manually I tried elden ring again and same thing happened. I’m thinking now that I have a defective unit.

[Turbo]

Are the bottom intake vents clear and not clogged with anything? How hot does the air feel coming out of the exhaust vents on the back?

[Falkentyne]

Originally posted by Litfuel:

I just got the deck last week and have issues with it seeming to get hot and restart itself in the middle of the game. It happened first with death stranding but after reading about it I assumed it was an issue with the game. But now if I play elden ring for more than 20 min (locked at 30fps mostly medium settings gpu load goes from 70-85%) the game freezes and the deck restarts. I assume it’s heat related as the fan is going and the back is warm to hot. Is this normal behavior or is this a defective deck?

This also happened with realistic battle simulator too but after I lowered its settings significantly it stopped.

What does the Deck itself say the APU temp is running at?
it has temp monitoring, you just need to enable it.

[MarvinR]

i don't know about death stranding, but elden ring has some stability issues(even on windows, but it crashes a bit harder on steamdeck)
although it shouldn't happen consistently at 20 minutes, but at random intervals(sometimes 20 minutes, sometimes 2 hours, sometimes no crash even after 5 hours)

i also regularly get that it stops loading at the bright white screen on startup, but after exiting and reopening(Steam button -> exit game) once or twice it always starts properly.

[Rage]

this sounds like an RMA to me, my deck has literally never overheated and that includes playing at up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit ambient temp.
If I had to hazard a guess chances are the APU thermal pad is not properly applied. If you are not hyper competent at electronics repair just RMA it.

[invision2212]

Turn on the system monitor layer by pressing the steam button, going to the battery icon and select option 3 or 4

Start a game and watch the temperature.
The steam deck should be able to play games up to about 95c before you should worry.

My steam deck never goes above 85c and I can play games on it for hours without a single issue.

If your deck continues to crash I would re-image it and see if that helps if it was a software issue. That’s assuming it crashes on any game that makes it work hard. If it continues to crash than you will need to request RMA

[NuLife]

try this press the steam button-system-scroll to bottom turn enable updated fan control off your fan will be on more but it will keep the deck cool, if that dont work may need to rma

[Litfuel]

Already tried the fan setting change from updated to old and back, no difference.

[⍟Tex]

Sounds like an hardware issue, I already played many demanding titles on deck, even with uncapped frames, and it never crashes once in 6 months. If I lock it to 30 fps the deck barely feels warm at room temperature.

[Litfuel]

Yep, talked with support. They going to rma it.

[NuLife]

Originally posted by Litfuel:

Yep, talked with support. They going to rma it.

Awesome^^ yer my deck never gets that hot, just gets warm if im playing demanding games for it, and i have fan control of because it does help it keep cooler and it don't make enough noise to be annoying so its worth keeping it cooler to having a quieter fan in my opinion. Good luck on ya next deck, no doubt it will be fine

[Litfuel]

Thanks!

[Litfuel]

Just an update, got the new deck and 0 problems. No overheating or graphic issues, no restarting.