Steam Hardware
A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title
The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Controller] - Steam Controller related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.
If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.
These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.
Rules:
- Follow the rules of Sopuli
- Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
- No piracy, there are other communities for that.
- Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
- This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
- Have fun.
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What was wrong with it?
It makes a loud and very obnoxious mechanical clicking noise that gets worse under load. I'm guessing one of the internal fans got damaged in shipping.
I opened my ticket with a video and explanation - a quick "hey, this is the first boot I've not even hooked up a monitor and listen to this noise".
So far Steam support has asked me if I've modified or disassembled it, then told me to try factory resetting it, uninstall any third party plugins, and turn off "updated fan controller". Last I heard from them was early Wednesday that they're looking into it. No followup just complete radio silence.
That could be something as silly as a loose cable being struck by a fan blade.
Doesn’t seem like getting access to the fan to confirm is terribly complex if you want to give it a shot yourself. This guide doesn’t cover that specifically, but it’ll get you most of the way there: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Machine+(2nd+Generation)+M.2+SSD+Hard+drive+Replacement/224781
The fan should be able to spin freely and quietly when you give it a push with your finger.
My first thought was to take it apart and fix whatever the problem is, I've fixed issues like this before.
But I also bought it to be plug and play - disassembling to fix what is either a shipping issue or manufacturing defect is not plug and play. So I decided I would use this opportunity to see how the support experience is. So far my consensus is I'm glad I haven't had any issues with my Steam Deck...
The slow response sucks, but usually they're really good about replacing things like this.