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How loud is the Steam platform?
The Steam Deck is as loud as any gaming laptop. Well, maybe it doesn’t sound like an old Asus or MSI gaming laptop, with a retina-scorching display with aggressive angles and RGB lighting, but the Deck is still certainly no acoustic wallflower.
If you’ve ever experienced a laptop running a demanding game in full chat, you’ll recognize the whine of turbines from the top of the Steam deck. “Chat” is actually a pretty good term when talking about the amount of noise a device makes, as our tests showed it popped in the same decibel range as a quiet office or normal conversation.
In other words, chatting with several people has the same overall noise level.
When we talk about the sound of Steam Deck, it might help explain what we actually mean. We’re not describing the volume of these two impressive speakers at the front of the deck, but rather the noise the device’s cooling system makes as it cools the AMD Aerith APU.
The powerful custom silicon has a maximum TDP of just 15W, which means it doesn’t require a lot of cooling to keep it cool. Most of its uptime is also comfortable at fairly high temperatures, thanks to the AMD Zen 2/RDNA 2 combo.
but do need Some Cooling, the tight confinement of the Deck case means that the individual cooling fans have to be small, and the small fans have to spin quickly to provide any kind of chip cooling capability.
The fact that it still only hit a 56dB average in our tests is pretty good, and it doesn’t sound too bad in terms of overall volume. For what it’s worth, I measured the volume using a simple app on my phone, in the quietest, most soundproofed room in my house. Because I only focus on the scientific method, obvs.
I measure from the same distance above the screen, not the direct path of the exhaust at the top, because then you’ll just hear the hot air hitting the mic.
The average 56dB comes from one of the most demanding games I’ve played on deck: Forza Horizon 5. Even the 30 fps limit won’t do much for the battery life of the device.
I also tested The Witcher 3 because it was needed for the bathtub Geralt. Running at the Deck’s standard 60 fps limit — which runs with V-Sync regardless of the in-game settings — we measured an average of 53dB. But Valve has been updating the fan curve during my pre-release testing of the device, and with the 30 fps limit toggle enabled, not only did I see a 116 percent improvement in battery life, but the volume dropped to an average of 43dB.
This is clearly the volume of light rain or birdsong. Twitter, Twitter.
But volume isn’t the most important thing about noise. Pitch is also a key component, and when we’re talking about complaining, Steam Deck definitely has it. The high pitch of the fan sound means it gets pretty intrusive, whether you’re downloading a game on SteamUI, actually playing it, or just sitting next to someone.
Yes, the deck failed what I would call important other tests. Sitting on the couch, competing with Captain Lee’s loud motto on the TV, I could almost play a game on the device. But I can’t sleep on the bed next to my partner in any nighttime OlliOlli World. By the way, this is not a euphemism.
The combination of pitch and whine means the deck’s fans are too obvious to be pleasantly ignored. Even when I was gaming on my own, I found that I had to crank up the volume on the speakers because they were also competing with the exhaust chat.
Thankfully, this is a mobile device designed to be used on the go. During transport, the already high ambient sound levels mean the Deck won’t make you a pariah in a quiet train car, nor will it dampen the overall roar of commercial passenger flights. So it at least passed our public embarrassment test.
But mobile PC gaming used to be that way. We always recommend picking the best gaming headset to pair with your new gaming laptop, and I recommend the Steam deck as well. Bring a pair of low-latency bluetooth headphones for comfort with gaming audio, and you’ll thank me.