Now, the Steam Deck will alert you if it gets too hot or cold

The Steam Deck will now be alerting you when it is operating outside of its safe operating temperature range as a result of warnings from Valve on the highest (and lowest) temperatures your Steam Deck is designed to operate at. A warning has been included by Valve as part of a significant update to the Steam Deck’s OS, version 3.3, to alert users when their device may run slowly or not at all due to extreme heat or cold. It is important to note that the Steam Deck’s safe operating temperature range is 0 to 35 °C. The system may limit performance or possibly stop down if those temperatures are exceeded.

That makes complete sense at high temperatures since the CPU and GPU, in this example, an AMD APU chip that combines both the CPU and the GPU, would operate at higher temperatures than their silicon was intended to. The Steam Deck chip will throttle at 100°C. The device will shut off at 105°C.

The Steam Deck will operate at 60 to 70°C while gaming in a room with an ambient temperature of about 20°C, therefore the ambient temperature will have a significant impact on attaining those kinds of temperatures.

Speaking of room temperature, if you are planning to game in a freezer you are out of luck as well. Steam Deck designer, Lawrence Yang, about the risk is of running the Steam Deck in these sorts of super chilled environments, he said it’s largely down to the battery.

“At very cold temperatures the battery starts to have a hard time,” Yang says. “Just like any battery powered device, [the] Steam Deck’s battery can’t sustain peak power draw at temperatures below 0°C (similar to the way cars have a tougher time starting in freezing weather). If temperatures do get this low, we’ll start to throttle the system to maintain battery longevity.” So, in theory, you will see that new warning from Valve in any temperature exceeding 35°C or below zero.