SD gets high temperature when downloading games

[Patrick Star]

Hi,

yesterday I (finally) received my Steam Deck 512 GB unit.

Putting some games on the Steam Deck, the temperature is getting worrying warm: up to 90 degree celsius for GPU and 91 for CPU. The temperature stays above ~80 at all times during downloading.

The room temperature is 19 degree celsius, the unit is on the desk in the shadow.

The SteamOS is on the latest beta release as of 2022-08-16. Stable release had the same effect.

Wondering why the temperature is getting that high just for downloading games? I get the point it needs to download the data through WiFi, process, write and extract the data. But still... A friend of mine only sees temperature of about 42 degree celsius.

Picture of the temperature:
https://i.imgur.com/EiNhBXX.png

Any suggestions?

[Clone303]

you dont want to know how high the temperature when you played Halo Infinite

[invision2212]

I just downloaded a game to see and my cpu topped out at 45c so there is something going on with yours. What’s the temp like during an intense game?

[Patrick Star]

I guess Control is a good example?
- In the main menu: 49/49
- In a new savegame in the main FBI building: 63/65
(degree celsius on GPU/CPU)

It feels like Steam Client is either
1) using much resources when downloading specific games (with a lot of files?),
2) not handling large Steam libraries well

It's strange... Wondering that's worth a bug report.

[Falkentyne]

Originally posted by Patrick Star:

I guess Control is a good example?
- In the main menu: 49/49
- In a new savegame in the main FBI building: 63/65
(degree celsius on GPU/CPU)

It feels like Steam Client is either
1) using much resources when downloading specific games (with a lot of files?),
2) not handling large Steam libraries well

It's strange... Wondering that's worth a bug report.

I believe the high temps is from it pre-caching shaders.
You get the same high temps when it has to compile Vulkan shaders for the first time (or after an OS upgrade). I had higher temps compiling Vulkan Shaders for The Ascent than I did playing The Ascent :)

Another user tested this using decoding for RPCS3 (whatever that playstation 3 emulator thing is called)--he got 86C temps.

[Patrick Star]

Those pre-cached shaders are usually downloaded pre-compiled when you download a game. So there shouldn't be any need to process them again?

Also - while not being familiar with technical details when it comes to game engines - usually those shaders are compiled on-demand while playing the game? So it shouldn't have any resource impact until the game is started and played the first time.

[darrenphillips666]

Yes, when it’s downloading it’s also decompressing and decrypting files.
If your APU is below 100°c, it’s fine, Your SD is not broken.
You can enable the old fan curve setting for a cooler system if you like?
You can then give us an update on how your system is cooler, but you can now hear your fan spinning.. 🙄😂

[Patrick Star]

Yeah, I thought so it's related to decompression/decrypting. I guess some factors are the amount of files and the size of them. Been facing this behavior even just when downloading to sdcard - so PCIe SSD doesn't seem to add to the heat.

But thanks for the input. It's still a bit odd feeling get such high temperatures "just" when downloading games...