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.

[Sharkus]

Happened again to me while downloading a game today. Battery was a bit over 50%.

[conorbebe]

Just wanted to add to this discussion that I am also experiencing this problem with my Steam Deck that arrived yesterday. It has happened twice so far with my Deck displaying "Out of battery, shutting down" before dying, despite being above 95% battery life. The only way to reactivate the Deck is to plug it in.

I've also checked and my Deck's battery health is at 100%, so this doesn't seem to be the issue. Going to try in offline mode now.

[Jifu]

Try switching your router's band from 2.4GHz to 5GHz and disabling the wifi power management on the developer tools. For some networks, that does the trick!

[Sharkus]

Arg. Happened again last night with the battery at >95% while downloading a steam deck/client update. I was nervous that an interrupted update may cause some corruption, but things are working fine (after the crash I downloaded/installed the update while connected to power). This is really annoying. Other than these forums is there a way to communicate this issue to Valve?

[Marlock]

引用自 Sharkus：

Arg. Happened again last night with the battery at >95% while downloading a steam deck/client update. I was nervous that an interrupted update may cause some corruption, but things are working fine (after the crash I downloaded/installed the update while connected to power). This is really annoying. Other than these forums is there a way to communicate this issue to Valve?

Yes, there is the support team...
did you try any of the workarounds in the linked thread marked as the answer?

[Sharkus]

I’m getting a lot of random shutdowns (steam deck suddenly turns off, power button turns it on without being connected to power) when playing games where the wifi signal is a weaker. I have not had this happen when in the same room as the wifi router.

I enabled developer mode and turned off wifi power savings. So far no shutdowns during game play. Hopefully this workaround provides some relief.

[Marlock]

yep, that's a very common behaviour

fortunately Valve is shipping a fix for 5GHz wifi instabilities in the current SteamOS 3 Beta...

it might not fix your particular issue (do try, now or when it leaves beta), but at least it means they are taking their wifi bug-hunting seriously, that driver changes can help the wifi work better and that sooner or later you might not need workarounds anymore to keep it stable

[Geradon]

If I may add something : I've been playing with my Steam Deck (256 GB) for a month, with no issue at all, until today, when my ISP changed my modem and my internet connexion speed. Till today I had a 400 Mbps bandwidth, and was using an external router for Wifi (a Deco wifi router, plugged in Ethernet to my old router), and so today I got my new modem with 1 Gbps download speed. I wanted to see the new download speed on my Steam Deck through the Wifi of that brand new modem, and I saw the Deck fast reaching 16W+ of usage, then shut down. I tried another download, and it shut down again. I figured the 1 Gbps download speed could be the problem, making the wifi chip working too fast, so I decided to force a 15W TPU limit ; and it began downloading really slow — but didn't shut down anymore. But I wasn't OK with this solution, so I re-plugged my old Deco wifi router to the new modem (so 2 Wifis are broadcasted in my home, both are AC Wifi, and both passwords are WPA2 (AES)), and the result of this is : no more shutdown, and back to my old download speed — but power while downloading on my Deco router never exceeds 8W on the deck (and it's 50MB/s). (I must say also that my new 1 Gbps router has the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz joined by BandSteering.)
Hope it helps.

[ulibe]

I sent this findings to the steam support:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I checked the network and wifi guide, all was well or not applicable.

Steam Deck Software versions:
--
SteamOS Holo
Codename: holo
Variant: steamdeck
Version 3.2
Build: 20220718.1
Kernel: 5.13.0-valve15-1-neptune-02197-gf6ec7ad3762a
Controller Firmware Build Date: Mi. 18 May 23:29 UTC +01:00
Steam Deck Serial: FWAA212004B7
Controller ID: MEDA20906059
Bios Version: F7A0105

Steam Version 1656536422
Client Build Date: Mi, 29.June 09:47 UTC +01:00
Webbuild-Date: Mi, 29. June 22:54 UTC +01:00
API Version: SteamClient020
-----------------------

General Network conditions: 50Mbit DSL Line, error free, full performance.
-----------------------
DSL Router: AVM Fritz!Box 7530 with internal 2.4G and 5G Wifi Accesspoint.
Distance to Router around 5 meters line of sight
Security: WPA2-PSK ( AES )
-----------------------
Summary:
5G works without issues on different channels, i checked 36 and 44 - no problems, even when the signal gets weak. ( i went downstairs to check )

2.4G
Reported Error:
If running on battery, the steam deck reports "low battery" and shuts down into battery saving mode, which can only be left by connecting the charger.
The shown battery percentage was above 50-70% in all cases. Battery health listed as 99% healthy, Battery has been calibrated earlier successfully.
After booting on charger again, the battery percentage was either reported as healthy as before, or shown as zero percent. In that case a second system boot was needed, to restore the normal percentage und to avoid an immediate shutdown after disconnecting the power.

The error occured by chance depending on the data rate, which has been transfered by wifi 2.4G.
I produced a maximum data rate by connecting via steam-link from a pc. The screen refresh to the pc consumed a lot of bandwith, so testing ran quicker.
Lower data rates just by browsing the Steam Store resulted in the error occurring less frequently.

I checked different channels from 1 to 13 with no change in result.

I disabled wifi security with no change in result.

I disabled the steam decks wifi power management via the developer menu with no change in result.
-----------------------

Checked with another Dual Band Accesspoint Netgear R6400
Distance to router around 5 meters line of sight
Security: WPA-PSK ( AES )

Connections to the Netgear R6400 resulted exactly the same as above.
5G worked flawlessly.

------------------------
2.4G
I noticed exactly the same behavior as described above with one difference.
It was possible to connect with less problems only on channel 13. In the line of sight it worked well, but when the signal dropped and the data rate decreased, the steam deck still said 'BYE BYE' .
All other tries ( wifi power saving, wifi security ) changed nothing.
------------------------------------------------------

Remarks:
A several number of the described shutdowns likely affect the battery calibration dataset.
The shown battery percentage changed sometimes, after each forced reboot.
In some cases 1% was shown, and the battery ran a very long time without further decrease, which surely affects calibration. A reboot resulted nearly in the old higher value.

Changing the wifi channel whilst being connected resulted sometimes in a reboot ( without power alert )
Connecting another wifi-accesspoint whilst being connected resulted sometimes in a reboot too.

I hope you find a solution in time, a partial success would be if this bug didn't affect the battery shutdown but would reported in a different way.

Regards,

Ulrich

[Jifu]

引用自 ulibe：

I sent this findings to the steam support:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I checked the network and wifi guide, all was well or not applicable.

Steam Deck Software versions:
--
SteamOS Holo
Codename: holo
Variant: steamdeck
Version 3.2
Build: 20220718.1
Kernel: 5.13.0-valve15-1-neptune-02197-gf6ec7ad3762a
Controller Firmware Build Date: Mi. 18 May 23:29 UTC +01:00
Steam Deck Serial: FWAA212004B7
Controller ID: MEDA20906059
Bios Version: F7A0105

Steam Version 1656536422
Client Build Date: Mi, 29.June 09:47 UTC +01:00
Webbuild-Date: Mi, 29. June 22:54 UTC +01:00
API Version: SteamClient020
-----------------------

General Network conditions: 50Mbit DSL Line, error free, full performance.
-----------------------
DSL Router: AVM Fritz!Box 7530 with internal 2.4G and 5G Wifi Accesspoint.
Distance to Router around 5 meters line of sight
Security: WPA2-PSK ( AES )
-----------------------
Summary:
5G works without issues on different channels, i checked 36 and 44 - no problems, even when the signal gets weak. ( i went downstairs to check )

2.4G
Reported Error:
If running on battery, the steam deck reports "low battery" and shuts down into battery saving mode, which can only be left by connecting the charger.
The shown battery percentage was above 50-70% in all cases. Battery health listed as 99% healthy, Battery has been calibrated earlier successfully.
After booting on charger again, the battery percentage was either reported as healthy as before, or shown as zero percent. In that case a second system boot was needed, to restore the normal percentage und to avoid an immediate shutdown after disconnecting the power.

The error occured by chance depending on the data rate, which has been transfered by wifi 2.4G.
I produced a maximum data rate by connecting via steam-link from a pc. The screen refresh to the pc consumed a lot of bandwith, so testing ran quicker.
Lower data rates just by browsing the Steam Store resulted in the error occurring less frequently.

I checked different channels from 1 to 13 with no change in result.

I disabled wifi security with no change in result.

I disabled the steam decks wifi power management via the developer menu with no change in result.
-----------------------

Checked with another Dual Band Accesspoint Netgear R6400
Distance to router around 5 meters line of sight
Security: WPA-PSK ( AES )

Connections to the Netgear R6400 resulted exactly the same as above.
5G worked flawlessly.

------------------------
2.4G
I noticed exactly the same behavior as described above with one difference.
It was possible to connect with less problems only on channel 13. In the line of sight it worked well, but when the signal dropped and the data rate decreased, the steam deck still said 'BYE BYE' .
All other tries ( wifi power saving, wifi security ) changed nothing.
------------------------------------------------------

Remarks:
A several number of the described shutdowns likely affect the battery calibration dataset.
The shown battery percentage changed sometimes, after each forced reboot.
In some cases 1% was shown, and the battery ran a very long time without further decrease, which surely affects calibration. A reboot resulted nearly in the old higher value.

Changing the wifi channel whilst being connected resulted sometimes in a reboot ( without power alert )
Connecting another wifi-accesspoint whilst being connected resulted sometimes in a reboot too.

I hope you find a solution in time, a partial success would be if this bug didn't affect the battery shutdown but would reported in a different way.

Regards,

Ulrich

Let us know if valve support gives you any reply, please :) The tests I've done go exactly accordingly to what you described! (on different routers/wifi extenders)

[DawdlingDan]

Also shuts off when uploading Steam cloud save data upon exiting a game. Lost my save due to getting corrupted, no longer shows in-game.

[ulibe]

Wow - now the Support says, this should be most likely a battery problem and they want to start an RMA. Im very confused how that fits to the error description and how a 'bad battery' could affect slow wifi data transmission. All my technical knowledge confirms, that the battery should be ok, although it is perfectly calibrated and lasts the expected time, depending on the drawn wattage.

[nephalim]

Amazing they still have no idea about this issue. There is nothing wrong with my battery.

[echozoolu]

This just happened to me as well in Aug 2023 and my SD is updated too. Wth

[Jifu]

引用自 echozoolu：

This just happened to me as well in Aug 2023 and my SD is updated too. Wth

I did send mine for RMA and valve sent me a new unit that has been working fine ever since. It was an hardware problem, unfortunately. Hope it's not the case for yours, but...

Good luck!