Steam Deck turns off for no reason. EDIT: Wifi turns it off.

[Mechanical guardian]

I have strange problem and I don't know what causes it. When I turn it on from sleep mode it runs normal, but then 15 seconds later it decides to turn off even though the battery was fully charged. I have to use the charger to get to turn it back on. It happened again when I tried to install a game on steam. Please fix this issue Valve. I don't know if this is a software issue or the battery itself. EDIT: We now discovered that it is the Wifi that is causing it to shut down. It only happens if the cloud is syncing or if you try to install a game. Further more is that it needs to have a stable bandwidth and it cannot be below 2.4 GHz. Right now we need to know how stable the bandwidth needs to be for the Steam Deck.

[somoiogul]

LionWalker の投稿を引用：

somoiogul の投稿を引用：

Did you guys test if this happens in offline mode or on an unsecured wifi? After more testing, the thing that triggers mine is using the network (eg. downloading something large) on my WPA2-secured wifi.

But I cannot test downloading in offline mode ;)

The Deck just can somehow, it's that good :). Jk, It was more so whether it crashes or not when not using the network. I've talked with support and they said the would tell me if they found anything about it. I was curious if it was more of a wifi + my router issue, or a Deck wifi issue in general. I basically haven't had it crash since I switched to plain WPA.

[Marlock]

offline mode affects only the steam app and games, not the underlying OS

[LionWalker]

austinp_valve の投稿を引用：

We may need to take a look at the unit you have. Please make a support ticket so they can help you troubleshoot and possibly start an RMA.

Thanks, I now made a Support Request describing the issue.

[justjonesss]

After reimaging the steam deck now it doesnt shut off with downloading..... now it the battery indicator drains rapidly but the deck doesnt shut off when it gets to empty

There seems to be some miscommunication between the software and hardware

Battery health says 7% in desktop mode

[Prezidentas]

justjonesss の投稿を引用：

After reimaging the steam deck now it doesnt shut off with downloading..... now it the battery indicator drains rapidly but the deck doesnt shut off when it gets to empty

There seems to be some miscommunication between the software and hardware

Battery health says 7% in desktop mode

well your battery controller is still defective

[Vukasin23]

I noticed that this only happened to me on a large download. I downloaded terraria off of battery onto internal storage just fine. I went to download war thunder on micro sd (40gb and the only thing ive downloaded on sd so far) and this issue happened twice. If I kept the unit plugged in while downloading, it downloaded just fine. My battery health is fine, and when not downloading, my battery operates normally (charges and discharges normally) i can play 2-3 hours of oblivion and still have 70%ish battery. So it only happens when downloading off of battery (may be affected by size of download and if sd or not) i made support ticket and explained this all and they just said they are looking into it and will update me if anything is found

Edit:20 min later: just performed a 70mb update with a 200mb patch to war thunder off of battery power with no issue.

Have had my steam deck for a week today, when i originally got i fully charged and did the update(s) after fully charged i downloaded (while still plugged in) Oblivion, Fallout new vegas, risk of rain 2, and potion craft. I think potion craft may have been downloaded off of battery power but i do not remember fully, it is a small download though. The deck updates games, and downloads and uploads steam cloud sync data no issue. I am also able to play risk of rain 2 multiplayer and war thunder (both require constant internet connection for multiplayer ofc) with no issue. So the problem is either with the size of the game being downloaded, or where its being downloaded (as this only happened to the one game i downloaded to my sd but its also the biggest game ive downloaded by far). Luckily I have no other games i plan on downloading, and the prospect of having the deck plugged into to download does not bother me as that process probably does drain the battery a bit. If they confirm its not hardware then i hope updates can fix it though

[Mechanical guardian]

Vukasin23 の投稿を引用：

I noticed that this only happened to me on a large download. I downloaded terraria off of battery onto internal storage just fine. I went to download war thunder on micro sd (40gb and the only thing ive downloaded on sd so far) and this issue happened twice. If I kept the unit plugged in while downloading, it downloaded just fine. My battery health is fine, and when not downloading, my battery operates normally (charges and discharges normally) i can play 2-3 hours of oblivion and still have 70%ish battery. So it only happens when downloading off of battery (may be affected by size of download and if sd or not) i made support ticket and explained this all and they just said they are looking into it and will update me if anything is found

Edit:20 min later: just performed a 70mb update with a 200mb patch to war thunder off of battery power with no issue.

Have had my steam deck for a week today, when i originally got i fully charged and did the update(s) after fully charged i downloaded (while still plugged in) Oblivion, Fallout new vegas, risk of rain 2, and potion craft. I think potion craft may have been downloaded off of battery power but i do not remember fully, it is a small download though. The deck updates games, and downloads and uploads steam cloud sync data no issue. I am also able to play risk of rain 2 multiplayer and war thunder (both require constant internet connection for multiplayer ofc) with no issue. So the problem is either with the size of the game being downloaded, or where its being downloaded (as this only happened to the one game i downloaded to my sd but its also the biggest game ive downloaded by far). Luckily I have no other games i plan on downloading, and the prospect of having the deck plugged into to download does not bother me as that process probably does drain the battery a bit. If they confirm its not hardware then i hope updates can fix it though

I hope that it's only the software. I had that experience as well. I downloaded Elden Ring first which is a big game. It didn't shut down as it was downloading that. One thing I forgot to add is that it also happens when it tries to sync with the cloud and as it's trying to download the saves from the cloud the Steam Deck shuts down. Oh and one more thing is that when I turn it back on with the charger, for some reason the Steam Deck thinks the battery is at 0%. I unplugged it and it turns off (obviously) but when I plug it again and turned it on it sees the battery normal.

[Vukasin23]

have you checked your battery health in the desktop mode? the first thing the support ticket had me do was that to check if there were any error messages there. I did not have any error messages. When my deck turns off and i plug it back in, it shows the battery percentage it did when it shut off (or one less percent from which i assume is used to power on). My battery seems to be displaying the correct charge at all times. You may have a bad battery if it actually thinks that it is dead. Im hoping it is just software but I dont see a whole lot of other threads expressing the same issue that we are having :/. If support gives me an update I will be sure to post the answer here. If you have a bad battery health though, make sure to send a picture or screenshot in your ticket so that they can start the rma process asap

[somoiogul]

Vukasin23 の投稿を引用：

have you checked your battery health in the desktop mode? the first thing the support ticket had me do was that to check if there were any error messages there. I did not have any error messages. When my deck turns off and i plug it back in, it shows the battery percentage it did when it shut off (or one less percent from which i assume is used to power on). My battery seems to be displaying the correct charge at all times. You may have a bad battery if it actually thinks that it is dead. Im hoping it is just software but I dont see a whole lot of other threads expressing the same issue that we are having :/. If support gives me an update I will be sure to post the answer here. If you have a bad battery health though, make sure to send a picture or screenshot in your ticket so that they can start the rma process asap

I mean not here , but I've seen it more than a couple of times on reddit. Here are some examples. This gives me hope that it's a software issue not hardware.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/ucaz1j/battery_drained_from_75_to_0_in_5_minutes/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/ugrend/shutting_down_randomly/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/uabkn9/i_believe_a_portion_of_steam_decks_have_faulty/

There still is the possibility that the are 2 separate issues one related to downloads and one being caused by bad Battery Management Systems.

[Mechanical guardian]

I saw this Reddit user has the same problem that I am having. Quote: "I noticed my Deck will crash on poor wifi connection usually whilst downloading, if I go to say near the router no crashes all day.

Also seeing the 0% charge thing sometimes when turning back on and have to restart. Sometimes it needs the charger connected to turn back on.

It wont happen in offline mode and games run absolutely fine. Im not sure if the crash happens just because of the poor wifi connection or when wifi cuts off or both."

So it could be the Wifi chip along with the software causing the issue. My battery doesn't drain in just 5 minutes.

[somoiogul]

Mechanical guardian の投稿を引用：

I saw this Reddit user has the same problem that I am having. Quote: "I noticed my Deck will crash on poor wifi connection usually whilst downloading, if I go to say near the router no crashes all day.

Also seeing the 0% charge thing sometimes when turning back on and have to restart. Sometimes it needs the charger connected to turn back on.

It wont happen in offline mode and games run absolutely fine. Im not sure if the crash happens just because of the poor wifi connection or when wifi cuts off or both."

So it could be the Wifi chip along with the software causing the issue. My battery doesn't drain in just 5 minutes.

I had the same exact issue actually. Network usage was the only constant with the crashes. I initially thought it was a power monitor issue and even recalibrated the battery after reimaging. However, without downloading, I got nearly 2 hours under a full load stress test (CPU+GPU), so my capacity was fine all along, but the initial "Out of battery" error tipped me off in the wrong direction

Got the lead from a guy on discord that it might be WPA-related and I haven't had an issue since I've switched my wifi to plain WPA. It's not ideal since WPA is a lot less secure than WPA2, tho.

[Mortalteddybear]

Hi everyone, I got my deck today and I have a similar issue.

Never plugged a micro sd, installed a couple games on ssd (path of exile, rogue legacy 2), played fr twenty minutes.

I'm connected to wifi, I'm not even downloading stuff but the deck shuts off really fast if not plugged in.

[Mechanical guardian]

I can confirm it also turns off in desktop mode as Steam is syncing with the cloud.

[Vukasin23]

I did some more testing, mine only has the issue when downloading a large game to my sd card. I donwloaded castle crashers to sd no issue. I then went to download valheim and it crashed at around the 500mb point. I uninstalled and redownloaded to the integrated memory and it didnt crash once. Are the games you are downloading the sync data for on your sd card? I noticed that my sd card is writing data WAYY faster than my deck. I think the deck is crashing from the write speeds. All the dync data i download is for games on my integrated memory. So maybe thats why it doesnt crash for my cloud syncing for me

[Mechanical guardian]

Vukasin23 の投稿を引用：

I did some more testing, mine only has the issue when downloading a large game to my sd card. I donwloaded castle crashers to sd no issue. I then went to download valheim and it crashed at around the 500mb point. I uninstalled and redownloaded to the integrated memory and it didnt crash once. Are the games you are downloading the sync data for on your sd card? I noticed that my sd card is writing data WAYY faster than my deck. I think the deck is crashing from the write speeds. All the dync data i download is for games on my integrated memory. So maybe thats why it doesnt crash for my cloud syncing for me

All my games are on my SD card. My Steam Deck is the 64GB model.