Anyone having charging or melting issues?

[Jasspur]

I have 3 Steamdecks between myself and my children, so I also have 4 chargers considering I have a dock. The kid's Steamdecks stopped charging on and off. It doesn't seem like a connection issue, because wigging it doesn't change anything. When one steam deck would stop charging another charger would work; however, if I plugged that charger back into any other steamdeck, it would stop charging immediately until I switched to another charger in which all charger would start working again. Now 2/3 Steamdecks are dead and won't charge at all. I tried both of their cords in my own and it temporarily caused by dock to stop until I plugged it up directly then went back to the dock. It doesn't make any sense to me. Well, today things got much worse. My wife hooked my son's up to a phone charger and it was charging for about 2 hours when it suddenly melted the head right off the charger at the Steamdeck. The battery also felt extremely hot. I don't know if it's some kind of logic in the battery going crazy or in the chargers, but it's done a lot of damage.

I've tried unplugging the batteries, and I've tried storage mode to no avail. I did manage to get my daughter's to come on today, but then it started beeping and doing what seemed to be power cycling. When I sent a ticket to Valve, they told me to cap the framerate and lower the graphics which I honestly find absurd for melting a cord (especially since it happened while shutdown and should shut the system down first). I haven't had these very long at all. Please let me know if you have experienced this or know what it may be as I've never seen anything like this actually travel across devices damaging more. I actually a little scared it's going to blow the battery on my kids. I don't know what to make of it.

[germanicianus]

I know of at least one person who has/has charging issues. Please read also my response there.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/0/3839927185129011770/?tscn=1685218604

I strongly recommend to check/monitor the battery health and charging rate (currently drawn Watt or Ampere) - there are tools to do that. You may also use a power monitor plug.

If the Deck has charging problems within warranty time, I strongly recommend to return it to get it repaired or a replacement. In the end it‘s a mobile device where the battery is a central part.

What are the specifications of your chargers?

[Jasspur]

Originally posted by germanicianus:

I know of at least one person who has/has charging issues. Please read also my response there.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/0/3839927185129011770/?tscn=1685218604

I strongly recommend to check/monitor the battery health and charging rate (currently drawn Watt or Ampere) - there are tools to do that. You may also use a power monitor plug.

If the Deck has charging problems within warranty time, I strongly recommend to return it to get it repaired or a replacement. In the end it‘s a mobile device where the battery is a central part.

What are the specifications of your chargers?

Thank you for your input. My chargers are the official ones that they stopped charging with. I can put my daughters in my dock and it will charge, but then mine stops charging when I switch back to it until I pull the USB-c cord out of the dock and plug it directly into my steamdeck. After that, it will charge on the dock again without issue; at least so far, but it happens everytime and worries me that it's going to stop. I'm now down 2 out of 3, and concerned for the 3rd. Most of them are brand new, but I have had them open to detach and reattach the battery in an attempt to get it to charge. My personal one is the only one with changed parts (SSD), and it's the only one still working. My wife was charging it with her usb-c phone charger (newest Samsung Galaxy charger) when the head of it melted off stuck inside the steamdeck's usb port. I had to pull it off with pliers. I don't know exactly what her amperage is, but I do believe it's a quick charge, so it's probably pretty close to the official one. The battery would charge to full before today, and lasted a long time.

[germanicianus]

The Steam Deck power adapter supply is specified for 15 Watt. Samsung designed the power adapter poorly as it didn't prevent overheating. I strongly assume it has a lower specification than 15 Watt. Have a look at the printing on the adapter itself.

Try below steps.
1) Connect the first dead Deck directly (without dock) to the first official Deck power adapter and plug it into a power outlet.
2) Try to turn turn the Deck on. If that doesn't work, wait 5 to 10 minutes, then try again to turn it on.

Do above steps with each power power adapter and with each dead Deck you own.

Open a ticket/RMA with Valve for the Deck(s) which stay dead.

I strongly recommend to check the Deck's battery health via terminal or via GUI.
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/check-battery-status

[notboxbot]

Originally posted by germanicianus:

The Steam Deck power adapter supply is specified for 15 Watt. Samsung designed the power adapter poorly as it didn't prevent overheating.

Small correction: the Steam Deck charger supports a maximum of 45 Watts (3A @ 15V), not 15 Watts.

[Jasspur]

Originally posted by germanicianus:

The Steam Deck power adapter supply is specified for 15 Watt. Samsung designed the power adapter poorly as it didn't prevent overheating. I strongly assume it has a lower specification than 15 Watt. Have a look at the printing on the adapter itself.

Try below steps.
1) Connect the first dead Deck directly (without dock) to the first official Deck power adapter and plug it into a power outlet.
2) Try to turn turn the Deck on. If that doesn't work, wait 5 to 10 minutes, then try again to turn it on.

Do above steps with each power power adapter and with each dead Deck you own.

Open a ticket/RMA with Valve for the Deck(s) which stay dead.

I strongly recommend to check the Deck's battery health via terminal or via GUI.
https://www.baeldung.com/linux/check-battery-status

Thank you. I'm going to try this with each of them now and get back to Valve. I haven't had luck charging with official docks so far. I just did the battery storage moe Valve suggest and it would not turn on with the offical dock. I hooked the official charger up directly that I know is good and it gave the slow chargeer warning for some reason. I unplugged it and placed it back in the dock and things went back to normal for that unit. It seems extra sensitive though. A gentle movement will lose charging and signal to the tv for about 1 second.

The one that melted the wires won't turn on at all so far. I think it's damaged. I may look to see if the battery is swollen or internal wires have melted. The last deck would not charge, but did have the white light do the 3 blink battery storage signal (which is odd, because I didn't put it in that mode). I have yet to be able to power it on. It sounds like beeps of a power cycle occurring. I can't always guarantee the things kids may have done with their units, but mine is pristine. I can't find goo or anything transfering that would cause mine to have temporary issues having using my charger on theirs for instance. Given 4 charges, 1 dock and 3 decks, I'm suprised I'm not hearing more people discuss similar issues.

[germanicianus]

Originally posted by notboxbot:

Originally posted by germanicianus:

The Steam Deck power adapter supply is specified for 15 Watt. Samsung designed the power adapter poorly as it didn't prevent overheating.

Small correction: the Steam Deck charger supports a maximum of 45 Watts (3A @ 15V), not 15 Watts.

Yes. I had a look at the printing of my official Steam Deck power adapter. The printing is exactly as follows.

OUTPUT : 5.0 V⎓3.0 A 15 W / 9 V⎓3 A /
15 V⎓3 A / 20 V⎓2.25 A 45.0 W

So it seems I need glasses because I didn't notice the other values :D .

[somoto the wolf]

Sorry to bring this thread back up, but just had a similar issue.

One morning I wanted to play,but I noticed my battery was low, and plugged it in with the official charging block.
I get no LED charging light.
I flip the cable around. Nothing.

I tried to switch outlets. No dice.
I used a USB to USB-C adapter and plugged it in to an amperage meter. It showed an amp for a second and then stopped charging. I unplugged it.
The battery showed 20% SOC, and I had already set up metrics on the desktop mode to monitor the battery temp. fan speed, and amperage when I got the deck last year.
I swapped to Desktop mode and plugged in the original charger... everything looked fine, but the deck didn't seem to do it's power check when plugged in.
At this time, I noticed a bad smell coming from the unit. I unplugged it, quickly looked at the battery health (and noticed it was at 85%) , swapped to gaming mode and then powered it off and took a look at the charging port.
One side of the connector looks black. The other side looks silver. It smelled strongly like something burning, but only when plugged in.

I opened it up, removing the Eight screws, and used a guitar pick to pry the outer shell off the back and did a quick visual inspection of the board and felt of the battery.
Nothing seemed wrong. Battery wasn't swollen or hot. I didn't go any further than this due to the charging port most likely being the issue IMHO, and put everything back together.

I used a soft brush and tried to clean the black stuff off the Female port, but I wasn't going to force anything with the fragile pins being in there.

Afterward I also took a look at the Male Charger connector, and noticed that the top half of the pins were not symmetrical with the bottom.


Last night I was playing a non steam game using proton compatibility mode in gaming mode. Only thing out of the ordinary that I did yesterday was leave the game idle running while plugged in.

I keep my CPU throttled to 7 W
Framerate limit on
Screen refresh rate 60hz
V-sync off
FSR mode

Temps were usually around 60*C for the GPU and 70*C for the CPU
Fans usually around 2,400 RPM.
Updated fan control enabled.

I'm cant tell if the Female pins are melted on one side, but the pinout on the male side doesn't look correct. There are defiantly pins missing.

[Jasspur]

Interesting. If they were asymmetrical, I would guess the traces shorted. Mine would work perfectly for a little while, but then occur on every deck I had. There was no visible damage or smells. It just seems to fail to begin charging, and spread from one steam deck to another. I would think the traces would have had to have crossed to do damage to multiple units like that. All of mine were official chargers.

[somoto the wolf]

I think it was a damaged charger. Waiting for it to be repaired from the local shop.

[Prezidentas]

the number of pins at the top and at the bottom of the charger is supposed to be different. I have heard that the LCD deck charging chips can melt, never heard anything about the connector itself. perhaps some junk got lodged into the port?

[Prezidentas]

Originally posted by somoto the wolf:

I think it was a damaged charger. Waiting for it to be repaired from the local shop.

how is that gonna work? the charger is a welded piece of plastic, you have to break its shell to open it...

[Prezidentas]

About the original 2023 story - steam deck LCD only charges with USB power delivery standard, which usually means that it can only charge quickly with a C to C cable or with a permanently attached cable charger like the original. A regular old phone charger with USB-A to C cable should only charge it at 2.5w, which would generate basically no heat on the cable.
Such issue would need USB analyzer to at least see what communication is actually happening between the deck and the charger. Something like a fnirsi fnb58.
What was the resolution of this issue? Did valve replace anything?

[somoto the wolf]

Local repair shop didn’t fix anything at all. Going to try to send it in to valve now.

[somoto the wolf]

Not sure that the charger is the issue anymore. I compared the pins to another usb-c device and never noticed the pins were always asymmetrical.

[somoto the wolf]

Sent in a ticket to Steam. Waiting for a useful response.