Steam Deck fan whine getting you down? Here’s one fix we don’t recommend
Steam Deck owners who are getting irked by fan whine from the device would do well to be cautious around following some advice which is currently floating about online regarding a fudged solution for the problem.
The issue, as PC Gamer highlights, is that one of the fans exhibits a high-pitched whine that can get pretty irritating (our sister site says it isn’t loud as such, but compares it to a tinnitus-like effect that can really start to grate after a while).
The workaround solution, as shared in a Reddit thread, is to open the Steam Deck, take four pieces of electrical tape, and stick those atop each other directly behind the Valve logo.
As pressing in this position can make the whining sound diminish, or even disappear, one theory is that there’s some play in the backplate of the Deck, and so placing the tape here effectively compensates for that apparent margin of manufacturing error, applying a little pressure and making the fan sound as it was designed to do.
Whether that explanation of what’s going on is true or not, we obviously don’t know, but certainly there are a number of folks on that thread who indicate that this fudging measure has made things better regarding their fan whine.
As you’re likely thinking while reading this, it doesn’t sound like a great idea to be opening your device and just slapping some layers of electrical tape in there.
While the original poster – and others who have tried this measure – have taken temperatures and claim that their Deck is still running at around the same level as it was previously (at least in some limited testing of certain games), there could be unintended side-effects of applying such a jury-rigged solution. As another poster points out, matters like any possible impact
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