When you’re one of many fortunate avid gamers to personal a Steam Deck (opens in new tab), you may wish to heed this warning from Valve. The corporate has closely implied customers ought not use the hand held gaming PC in temperatures exceeding 35°C, as that will see the system hit its thermal limits and decelerate or just shut off.
For our buddies within the midst of a heatwave, a fast be aware about Steam Deck in excessive temperatures. Steam Deck performs at its finest in ambient temperatures between 0° and 35° C. If the temperature will get larger than this, Steam Deck might begin to throttle efficiency to guard itself.July 19, 2022
The customized AMD APU throughout the Steam Deck is designed to run as much as 100°C, no questions requested. That appears excessive sufficient to climate any outside situation, however it’s all about ambient air temperature. In our testing the Deck’s silicon reached round 60–70°C whereas gaming, although has been identified to rise up to round 80°C with much less aggressive fan profiles in place. Meaning any main fluctuations in outside temperatures might trigger complications.
After 100°C, the Steam Deck will start to crank down efficiency and energy to assist hold that temperature from exceeding its most, which is a sweltering 105°C. At that temp, the system will shut itself all the way down to keep away from any injury being performed to the APU.
It is not essentially a harmful factor to occur, as the entire level of your CPU having a safeguard in opposition to excessive temperatures is in order that it does not hit a temperature that shall be an issue for the silicon inside.
However when you are avoiding injury when hitting that temperature restrict, it is nonetheless not advisable to take action usually.
Exceeding your CPU’s TJ Max temperature—the purpose the place a CPU will start to power temperatures down by any means vital—is not a brand new one to PC avid gamers. I am positive any overclocker has hit that time earlier than or simply anybody who was unfortunate sufficient to have bolted on their CPU cooler a little bit wonky.
However the Steam Deck is not your common gaming PC, and it does not have a lot of room inside to vent out extraordinarily scorching air. In reality, in case your CPU is overheating, due to the all-in-one nature of the Steam Deck’s AMD processor, that additionally means your GPU is getting awfully toasty. And your RAM. And your SSD. It is a compact system and there are numerous thermally delicate components inside it that want as a lot contemporary, cool air as attainable to perform at their finest.
The warmth will have an effect on efficiency of the Deck at some extent, and that is one thing the Steam Deck, with its low-power however well-optimised APU, cannot afford to lose a lot of.
So should you’re nonetheless fighting the warmth outside, maybe it is best to depart your Steam Deck inside the home this summer season. Or at the very least hold it safely saved till you are in a shady spot or someplace with AC.
The identical is true on your cellphone, laptop computer, and all method of electronics. Most chips have a tendency swap themselves off across the identical form of temperature, so all of it comes all the way down to their cooling resolution as to how effectively they fare. Direct daylight will in all probability be a killer for many, anyhow, as cooling followers and heatsinks can not cool parts decrease than ambient temperature, and sub-ambient cooling is hardly moveable.
The unhappy reality is that we’ll should be extra thoughtful of how we use our electronics outside in coming years and a long time, as temperatures are set to proceed to rise globally because of human-caused local weather change (opens in new tab) and heatwaves change into extra frequent.
