staff@slashgear.com (Jordan Wirth)
2024-04-14 12:30:49
www.slashgear.com
The original undervolting process outlined by CryoByte33 was somewhat tedious — and that wasn’t the fault of CryoByte33. You needed to boot your Deck into Smokeless_UMAF simply because Valve did not officially support undervolting controls. Valve later introduced native settings in the Preview channel, which wasn’t exactly ideal for users who prefer Stable’s, well, stability. However, since Stable update 3.5.5 and firmware 118, anyone can access undervolting settings from their stock BIOS, and no additional software or workarounds are required. Before you get started, hit the Steam button, then head to Settings > System > Software Updates and press Check for Updates. Apply the latest Stable update and restart your device. Once it powers back on, you’re ready. You can use a USB mouse if you like, but the arrow keys work fine to change BIOS settings.
We recommend avoiding Preview and Beta channels since they are for testing purposes and therefore exhibit more bugs. Make sure to set aside a couple of hours to undervolt your Deck. You’ll be booting into your BIOS, changing settings, rebooting, and stress-testing your Deck with a game — and repeating that sequence multiple times. A proper undervolt could, based on personal experience, take anywhere from 2-4 hours. Remember to keep your Steam Deck plugged in during testing since you’ll easily consume all the battery. Bonus tip: Have a YouTube video or TV show playing in the background to keep yourself entertained.