Steam Deck has become unusable

[niko81]

Had my deck since late July and all was good until about 3 weeks ago when Performance suddenly got terrible.
Steam deck home UI is lagging,
in game play there is loads of lag, unresponsive, issues with audio clipping and GPU is constantly at 99%. Often games just hang or crash when loading. Most of the games are steamdeck verified and those that aren’t were working well before this performance problem started .
I have updated to the latest steam OS version and all games are patched to latest version.

I have tried multiple things to try and resolve the performance issue, none of which have made any difference
- shutting down and restarting while connected to PSU as suggested by steam support
- hard resets, holding power button for 12 seconds
- switching OS branches, changes to beta which initially looked promising. Steam deck home UI was responsive again, but all went down hill once I tried to load a game. Performance plummeted and whole system became unresponsive again, games either took an age to load or just didn’t work

The system remains completely unusable.

All I can think of now is a factory reset, but that will mean I loose everything including all my emu deck game config. And even then I’m not confident it will fix anything as I have a feeling it’s a hardware issue

Have raised to steam support but they are very slow to respond.

Has anyone else had similar problem and can you help as it’s currently a £570 paperweight

[Skankhunt42]

How full is the internal harddisk?

[Bee🐝]

Beta or stable? Whichever one you one switch to the other and try again.

[niko81]

Skankhunt42 eredeti hozzászólása:

How full is the internal harddisk?

512 gb deck hd and also have a 512gb SD card

Both with less than 50% of storage used

[niko81]

Bee eredeti hozzászólása:

Beta or stable? Whichever one you one switch to the other and try again.

Tried switching between beta and stable. In both cases Initially seemed positive on the home UI, until trying to run games at which point lag returned and responsiveness dropped off a cliff.

[Haruspex]

Well, if it's a hardware issue you're going to lose your EmuDeck stuff anyway in the RMA, so might as well try that factory reset. Worst case is you confirm the hardware problem and you will have to send it off. Best case is it turns out to be a software issue that should now be fixed. Sure, you lost your EmuDeck config, but that can be redone. At least you don't have to send it away.

[Bee🐝]

Niko81 eredeti hozzászólása:

Skankhunt42 eredeti hozzászólása:

How full is the internal harddisk?

512 gb hd deck and also have a 512gb SD card

Both with less than 50% of storage used

Something obviously went wrong somewhere - you might need a re-image, but let's do the basics first:

Uninstall and altogether remove all emulators and associated software. This is especially necessary if you installed it following some Youtuber's "how to".

Edit: You need to get as close to a clean slate as you can. So, that also means kicking all the extra launchers.

[niko81]

8bitbeard eredeti hozzászólása:

Well, if it's a hardware issue you're going to lose your EmuDeck stuff anyway in the RMA, so might as well try that factory reset. Worst case is you confirm the hardware problem and you will have to send it off. Best case is it turns out to be a software issue that should now be fixed. Sure, you lost your EmuDeck config, but that can be redone. At least you don't have to send it away.

You’re right, but i’m hoping someone here might have a less time consuming solution. But i know it’s probably wishful thinking

[Skankhunt42]

Have you checked the log files for errors? I do not know exactly where these are in Steam OS, google might help you there.

[niko81]

Bee eredeti hozzászólása:

Niko81 eredeti hozzászólása:

512 gb hd deck and also have a 512gb SD card

Both with less than 50% of storage used

Something obviously went wrong somewhere - you might need a re-image, but let's do the basics first:

Uninstall and altogether remove all emulators and associated software. This is especially necessary if you installed it following some Youtuber's "how to".

I’ve not made any emulation setup changes or added any emulator games since august, so would be surprised if was these were causing issues.
And recently i’ve only been playing games from steam library.

But open to trying anything to get it usable

[Lecuistot]

what I predicted too much AAA games stress too much this litlle machine. That s why I use it only for inde or stream. And still fine. Except joypad fragile ♥♥♥♥

[niko81]

Uninstalled EmuDeck, Emustation and deleted all associated rom files.
Removed all games and application from the steam library.

Restart steamdeck and still the same.

Tried switching between OS branches again. Still the same.

Think i might at the point of factory reset.

[Bee🐝]

Niko81 eredeti hozzászólása:

Uninstalled EmuDeck, Emustation and all associated rom files.
Removed all games and application from the steam library.

Restart steamdeck and still the same.

Tried switching between OS branches again. Still the same.

Think i might at the point of factory reset.

You've done everything you could, so it's reset time. It's sucks, but at least you'll know if you need an RMA.

[niko81]

In a last ditch attempt I tried installing all the available updates on linux desktop.

Restarted and still the same.

Also noticed there is a really quite almost ticking or knocking sound coming from the deck?? They do have SSD’s right?

Anyway looks like it’s factory reset time.

[Bee🐝]

Niko81 eredeti hozzászólása:

In a last ditch attempt I tried installing all the available updates on linux desktop.

Restarted and still the same.

Also noticed there is a really quite almost ticking or knocking sound coming from the deck?? They do have SSD’s right?

Anyway looks like it’s factory reset time.

Noise? That doesn’t sound normal at all and I can’t remember a bug report that’s even close.

Yeah, reset and if that doesn’t work, open a ticket with Support and be sure to mention the noise.

Edit: It could be something knocking against the bottom of the case when the fans spins…a loose wire or something.

[niko81]

Performed factory reset

Deck shut down and then logo loaded followed by a blank screen for about 15 - 20mins, during which the screen backlight flashing on and off every now and again.

Finally it restarted & the set up screen came up and I set up deck again, time, network, steam acct etc.
On steam deck home UI performance is still not good, lag/unresponsiveness.

Updated OS and proton stuff.

Installed Desk job & Portal 2.

Performance still really poor, for both games and Steamdeck UI; lag and unresponsive.
GPU still running constantly high often constantly spiked at 99%

Have added all details to Steam Support ticket and we'll see what happens