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Steam deck fans screaming? iFixit is looking for, well, fix it
In our Steam Deck review, Wes documented how high the fan inside this small portable gaming rig can go. People have been complaining online, and it seems like companies like iFixit are starting to take notice.
If you start the Deck in a quiet space, this is probably one of the first downsides you’ll encounter, and it’s easy to see yourself kicked out of bed to sleep on the couch. So it’s no wonder Steam Deck users are calling on fan manufacturers to come up with quieter solutions.
Weiss explained that the deck’s fans “can go up to obnoxious pitches even under relatively light loads.” “During testing, Valve did update the fan profile to be less erratic and run at a lower RPM in lighter games, but the Deck fans are definitely louder and more annoying than the Switch.”
In response to the question “how loud are the Steam decks”, our Dave made it clear that the decks failed the “significant other” test. “The combination of pitch and whine meant Deck fans were too obvious to be happily ignored. Even when I was playing the game myself, I found that I had to crank up the volume on the speakers as they were also competing with the chat from exhaust vent.”
In the words of our Allen, “It’s not loud by itself, just the perfect mosquito in a beer can be annoying.”
One Reddit user pointed out The difference between the fans of the Q1 256GB Deck and the Q2 512GB. There seems to be a small improvement, but users still seem uneasy.
Reddit user solohack3r suggested that Deck’s “fan control, lm sensor, and other dependencies do not measure temperature correctly”, which is believed to be causing fans to spin at unnecessarily high RPMs. It is said that this is not a problem unique to Deck, the upcoming Linux kernel RC will fix it.
That was two months ago.
When software engineers do their best for a release build, the next logical step is to have the modders among us try to replace the faulty hardware.
Thankfully, Valve didn’t make the Steam Deck into a Chinese puzzle box like some manufacturers (no finger pointing *cough* Apple, Nintendo). The problem is, due to the uniqueness of the Deck form factor, it’s been hard to get a good 50mm x 10mm 5V to this day.
after Noctua tell a Redditor Another Reddit user, Steam Deck won’t have Noctua fans chime in, emailed Noctua Support if there are plans to release a 50mm x 10mm 5V fan in the future. “Currently, we have no plans for such a product. However, I will forward your product suggestion to our department,” said the owl customer service.
It’s all very cut and pasted, but it seems to be stirring up enthusiasm. Maybe if enough people pester them…
Meanwhile, iFixit jumped at the opportunity. iFixit, championing the right to repair, has officially said it will be rolling out replacement fans for the Steam deck.
Hi! We’re planning to sell replacement fans, and we’ve been working on which ones we’ll be offering.April 18, 2022
If all goes according to plan, we may see Steam Deck fans for sale on the iFixit store, although a follow-up tweet does state that “we’re working on finding fans without noise, but it depends on what we have at our disposal.”
Hopefully this is just another step in the evolution of Steam deck mods, and fan-makers will realize that this could be a lucrative market. Whatever your opinion of fans on the Steam platform, let’s be honest: sell a gaming device to a community like ours, and we’ll definitely find a way to tear it down, and Frankenstein, whether it’s needed or not.