Steam Deck Update Adds Temperature Warning for Players

A couple of weeks ago, Valve warned about using the Steam Deck in high temperatures, now a new update for the system offers similar notifications.

After a few months of it being on the market, and with more and more people now getting hold of theirs, the Steam Deck is proving its worth in the mobile gaming industry. Of course it’s not perfect, but with Valve’s handheld device now compatible with over 4,000 games, and that number growing all the time, it’s been a successful hardware endeavor for the company. As a result, the developer is keen to keep the system up-to-date, and a recent patch offers up a temperature warning for users.

Having just shipped version 3.3 of SteamOS, patch notes for the latest Steam Deck update highlight a number of tweaks and fixes that have been implemented. One of the more interesting ones is that the device will now notify gamers when the “temperature goes outside the safe operating range.” This likely means that users will be told when it’s too hot or too cold to use the device safely. However, it doesn’t say what happens if these notifications are ignored.

This new update is likely to have emerged after Valve issued a warning about how using the Steam Deck during the heat wave could impair its performance. With it running best between temperatures of 0 and 35 degrees Celsius, the company has urged people to be careful using the mobile PC beyond this, adding that it can “throttle” functionality. It’s been said that the device will shut down if the APU, or Accelerated Processing Unity, runs hotter than 105 degrees. This warning itself was issued when the UK was experiencing record-breaking heatwaves last month.

It’s good to see that Valve is taking measures to ensure that no physical damage comes to the device when it’s being used in hot or cold temperatures. The company seems keen to make sure that users are getting the most out of it. In fact, recently, another warning was issued when a Steam Deck user managed to install a larger SSD with seemingly no drawback. Concerns from Valve said that doing so could “shorten the life” of the device, even if it looks as though it’s working perfectly with a physically bigger hard drive.

Originally touted as a competitor to the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck has shown that it goes beyond gaming. With the ability to install a different operating system on it, and it being compatible with a mouse and keyboard, it’s more like a portable PC than a handheld games console, and it could be one of the reasons why it’s proving popular.

Source: gamerant