The heat is on for many folks in the northern hemisphere this summer. Rising temperatures across parts of Europe, North America and the Caribbean have prompted much discussion about the weather. But, heat doesn’t just affect man and nature, it affects machines, too. Such is the case with a recent tweet from the official Steam Deck Twitter account warning users to be mindful of the ambient temperature when using the system.
According to Valve, the Steam Deck doesn’t mind functioning in any temperature between 0-35 Celsius (0-95F). Anything beyond that, however, and that’s where problems will begin to start.
In the case of exceeding the 35°C/95°F heat cap, the Steam Deck will begin to throttle its performance in order to “protect itself”, warns Valve. This, of course, will result in lower framerates and other possible signs of performance degradation while playing. But, there’s a bit of wiggle room. In a separate tweet, more technical info is provided about the Steam Deck’s chipset handles workloads when hot.
100°C/212°F is where the Deck’s APU will max out at before it begins to throttle performance. At 105°C/221°F is where the system will completely shut itself off as one last safety precaution to ensure it doesn’t burn out any of its components. Keep in mind that these temperatures refer to the Deck’s internal readings, not the temperature around its user.
In short, the higher the temperature of the room/area you’re in, the quicker your Steam Deck’s internal temperature will rise, thus leading to dropped performance and ultimately a system shutdown.
If you are in a particularly warm environment, then there are some ways to mitigate these effects. First, you can try playing while sitting directly in front of a fan. Another option is to simply play the Steam Deck in shorter sessions; perhaps 30 minutes to an hour, before giving it a short rest.
This warning from Valve follows a similar one from Nintendo which recently had to also provide guidance for using the Nintendo Switch in warm environments.
