Steam Deck fan making loud rattling noise

[Sunny]

As the title says. Brand new 512 sd that has a really jarring rattling sound coming from the fan
whether im just browsing steam os or in a game

[Marlock]

that's probably a flawed fan bearing letting it vibrate when instead it should spin smoothly

i think you should RMA it...

[Sunny]

Originally posted by Marlock:

that's probably a flawed fan bearing letting it vibrate when instead it should spin smoothly

i think you should RMA it...

Man, this sucks. I'm nervous to go through the RMA process too. What If I get yet another issue like a dead pixel, broken bumpers, etc. like I'm seeing all over reddit and other forums? That and having to wait 3+ weeks for a replacement sounds like a nightmare to me

What a ♥♥♥♥ situation.

[Marlock]

if iFixIt already had their hands on replacement parts, you could try them... they have some sort of official deal with Valve, but the fans aren available through them yet

the worst part about a failing fan bearing is that it might be just noisy or it might be rotating less than usual and eventually stopping when it shouldn't... i had a PC cpu fan with an issue like this for a while and it overheated once from this... not enough to break from overheating, because there are cpu protections to turn it off before that, but stil enough to suddenly power it off out-of-the-blue loosing unsaved game progress, etc

[SnakeJayd]

Having the same issue with my 256GB model that arrived yesterday.
Searching around online I have seen that others have had similar issues but I have not seen any solution.
The noise isn't crazy loud but sounds like a bad bearing or a fan blade barely clipping something.

I am also hesitant to send it back for something so minor, but I don't want it to fail after the RMA period and then I kick myself over it.

[Sunny]

Originally posted by SnakeJayd:

Having the same issue with my 256GB model that arrived yesterday.
Searching around online I have seen that others have had similar issues but I have not seen any solution.
The noise isn't crazy loud but sounds like a bad bearing or a fan blade barely clipping something.

I am also hesitant to send it back for something so minor, but I don't want it to fail after the RMA period and then I kick myself over it.

Part of me wants to take off the backplate and turn it on to see what exactly is happening to the fan but I’m afraid of voiding warranty. I already messaged support to see what I should do and still waiting. Let me know what you end up doing and I’ll do the same.

[Artyom Havok]

Mine started doing this last night while playing some ME Andromeda. Its seems to only do it when the unit gets near 90c temps (so far only that game seems to gets that hot) I suspect the fan or a component near the fan is heating up and expanding just enough to rub or clip on something nearby. If I let it cool down the sound goes away until it reaches that temp again.

Part of me wishes we could adjust the fan curves ourselves so I could make the fan rpm higher PER GAME to keep it cooler while playing this game. I'm not sure if I should be nervous about permanent damage if I continue the game or not know it always causes this issue.

[Marlock]

rattling is usually due to bad bearings, but that also usually happens more on lower rpm and gets quieter on higher rpms

I can only imagine that the fan blades have an inbalanced weight due to manufacturing error on that unit, or that you're right and it's touching something only if the temps are very high...

running at max rpm in lower temps should be enough to rule one or the other idea out

touching stuff at high temps might reduce fan efficiency when it's needed the most, so that's not great, but shouldn't cause permanent damage because the CPU will auto-shutdown before actually overheating to a damaging degree

[Artyom Havok]

Originally posted by Marlock:

...but shouldn't cause permanent damage because the CPU will auto-shutdown before actually overheating to a damaging degree

oh yeah that makes sense. i forgot that was a feature.