For those of you following this tutorial in 2024. Undervolting is in the default Steam BIOS now. To access, hold volume up during boot. All the undervolting settings are in the advanced section but only allows you to go down to -50mv.
Just to be VERY clear: If you cause harm to the Deck by following this guide and reach out to Valve to do an RMA, please be truthful about the cause and don't lie about it! Valve has been nothing but great to the community, and I wouldn't want to cause ill-will with them! UPDATE: Newer BIOS versions break Smokeless_UMAF, I'm working on a fix so stay tuned!
I'm not going to do this because I'm not unsatisfied with what I already have but do you think in the future Valve will make an update where you can get more CPU and GPU while being plugged into the power source?
@@VegitoBlackityBlack The issue is the cooling solution. I don't believe there's a way to cool the deck even with an external solution that would warrant much of a boost. It would make more sense that you can plug into a dock that plugs into an external GPU so the heat is on that and not added to the deck.
@@VegitoBlackityBlack it’s possible, but unlikely. They’d need to overhaul a lot of the OS to get the clocks to behave correctly and that would be a lot of development.
Finally done with my tests - T'was a long day! *Edit*: Did some more tests, updated the findings! Steam Desk tested: 256GB Q4 2022 Max UV: 55/55/55 - At GPU UV of minus 60mV, I started seeing some crashes and artifacts during my tests (listed down below). I was also experiencing artifacts in tests that I can't specify yet, but I will add them to the comment afterwards. 55mV was stable across the board so I'm sticking with that. TDP: 18W - This wasn't a question of "can I go higher", but a question of "*do* I want to go higher". The OC I chose should explain why I stick to 18W. I had it set on 19W before, but testing with Powertools showed that the clocks handle it in 18W or even 17W just fine. OC: 3850/1950 (+350/+350) - I emulate a lot, and I wanted to see how far I can push the CPU without reaching AVG temp of 85c or higher. CPU was way too hot for me, even after cooling the CPU quite a bit. GPU handled a bit more OC after the extra UV I put the GPU through. All of my tests were similar: 5-minute run on BOTW on CEMU for CPU load, 1 run of RE4 Remake mercenaries in the Village stage for GPU load. In those *new* tests, BOTW went to around on max temps of 84c on CPU and 84c on GPU, with averages of around 79-81c on both. RE4 Remake went a bit lower with 83c max on CPU and 84c max on GPU, but with averages of 80c on both. Battery life was almost the same, with RE4 remake giving me 1:35 hours of battery life on the performance settings, and BOTW still giving me around 1:27 hours. RE4 Remake with the combination of bigger UV and more GPU speed was able to run at a close 60FPS on performance settings which is quite frankly ridiculous, I wasn't expecting that big of a boost, but what do you know. In BOTW case the I am now able to pin the refresh rate on 45FPS and get a mostly consistent experience, I will not push it further than that, as I believe a bigger CPU UV would start to affect emulation as well. The CPU boost is a godsend for Switch and other high-end emulators that are heavily dependent on CPU. Luminescent Platinum, the big Brilliant Diamond mod stays almost exclusively in the 55+ FPS mark, and PLA is keeping 30FPS more consistently, though the issue is definitly a shader compilation thing. I trust the awesome guys at YUZU + Ryujinx to figure this out. I still need to check the temp reading issue, but other than that - it was a great success. Again, fantastic video Kyle. You're giving this community the teachings it needs to grow and be better. Don't underestimate what you're doing here. From one Zelda fan to another - glad I can contribute to you buying the new game :)
You're a legend, man! Thank you for yet another awesome donation, for the *extremely* detailed findings, and for the kind words ❤️🙏 I JUST reached 40K today, so keep an eye out for a stream announcement! I'll make sure it's on your sub wall a few days in advance if possible 😁
@@AaronHolden UV is usually a good practice. OC is always a risk, but I push my deck greatly as a Video Game Journalist, so having that extra power is always wanted. I also like to emulate and having that small boost to the CPU gives me a little more stable performance on my Switch and WiiU dumped games.
You're going places as a creator in the tech space no matter if you stick to only Deck content or not. Clear, concise, honest, and no fluff. Exactly what this community needed.
Lots of other tech channels show you how to tinker with settings but not why. I really appreciate the time you take to explain what's going on with the settings that are changed. Keep up the amazing work!!
I highly appreciate and love learning basics, fundamentals and advanced reasons and how things work that you go over in detail. One of my favorite things of your videos.
Dude, this is the most well-presented guide I've ever seen on youtube. This video is a masterclass on how to construct a youtube tutorial, and people should pay you for the lesson.
You are one of the very positive examples of why the linux community can shine: You make the steam deck even better for everyone by sharing your knowledge and helping lots of people for free. You are awesome, thank you.
@@cryobyte33 yo your the goat got my steam deck 5 days ago got so much set up and so much more too do! Adding this to my to-do list same with moonlight and duel booting!
I've had my Deck undervolted with raised clockspeed limits for a few months now. The biggest improvement for me that didn't involve increasing the TDP(which would reduce battery life and increase temperatures) was undervolting the GPU. My GPU now manages to hit over 1600mhz in some spots on the RDR2 benchmark where it would typically be below 1500mhz before. The results of this are that the Average FPS is slightly higher but more noticeably, the 1% lows are quite a bit better and I don't have stutter nearly as much in places where I assume the GPU was throttling against the TDP limits before.
Based on your observations, that sounds correct. I mention it near the end of the video, but it's all a balancing act of exactly how you want to run your Deck. I might make the "15w overclock" a portion of the advanced video if it comes to be 🙂
That would be great 👍 I’ve overclocked on the past but for my humble handheld a cooler running and more power efficient Deck with less stutters would appeal to me more than a potentially hotter running machine at the limit of its chip. I think I will save the OC for the new Asus as it has double fans = better cooling… hopefully the standard unit isn’t already an OC’d device.
I just stuck with an UV of 20/20/20 as that's what seemed to work best and I usually use my deck plugged in, so I'm not too worried about battery life. Was able to get the OC of 4000/2000 and a TDP of 23 watts working so I'm pretty darn happy with the results. Thanks for the great video man. I've been keeping up with your releases and I appreciate the work you've put in to help all of us!
This man has been teaching a master course in Linux with the steam deck. Most people just tell you what to do and you follow along. After these videos I walk away with actual new knowledge and understanding of what I just did, which then helps me out with random things here and there going forward. You deserve so much more man. Keep it up.
Not all hero’s wear capes! Your videos get better and better and you do such a great job explaining for people that don’t understand what’s going on. Thank you again for your hours and providing us with everything!
I actually did this before this video but I love that you did a video on this. I got -35 -35 -40 for the undervolt. I didn't increase the TDP but I set Max CPU clock to 3700. In games that are single threaded (some emulated stuff), the CPU does reach 3.7 GHz but not in games that require more power and are more multi-threaded. I don't really need any more CPU power at the moment so I am leaving things for now.
That's a perfectly valid way to leave it, the benefit of knowing the process is that you can choose exactly what the right balance for you is 😁 Thanks for watching!
I achieved -40 -40 -40. I tested to -50 -50 -50 but was worried that I might be pushing it. I chose extra stability, which was more important than a little extra undervolt. I also tried 3.8ghz on the CPU and 1800mhz on the GPU at 20W TDP. I ended up reverting and keeping the undervolt to preserve battery life. For reference, I have a Q4 2022 64gb Steam Deck with a 512gb upgraded SSD.
Be aware, even if things are stable, actual power draw, Temps and battery life can get worse with higher numbers. I was "stable" at -40, -25, -30, but I had higher power draw. The sweet spot for me was -30, -25, -25. Anything less or more produced higher power draw, higher temps and shorter projected battery life.
My god, this video is everything I wanted to know about both Undervolting and Overclocking and then some! You've explained it all perfectly and I will definitely be trying it on my Deck, but that might take a while since I'm quite busy at the moment. Also, can't wait to learn about the sentient rocks lmao
Thank you, mate! Very informative, detailed video. I am always waiting for your content as much as my favorite shows! Seriously! I hope that you are able to continue doing the things you do, as our community needs you so very much! Cheers!! ❤
You provide such an immense amount of value to this community. One of my favorite things is that you don’t blindly give advice, but educate us on our choices so that we can understand the changes we’re making and decide which ones are best for our individual situations. You make potentially daunting subjects easily digestible. Bravo yet again my friend. 👏🏻
You're the best man, that's exactly what I strive to do. I don't want to give advice as much as just allow for each person to make their own informed choices about each subject I teach ❤️
This video is sick. Fans are a bit loud for my taste running Hogwarts Legacy through my 1080p monitor during testing, but I figure that's probably a worst-case scenario. I'm also not used to the old Steam Deck fan curves. I may roll it back a bit or see if I can get away with some fan curve tweaks. Ended up with a 30-30-30 underclock, 22w TDP, and 4000/2000 overclock. My deck is brand new. Based on the small sample size of your decks and mine, it looks like the newer Decks may be better overclockers. I'm lazy and impatient, so I didn't do the proper "reach instability then roll back" OC method. Once I was within spitting distance of your newer deck and stable, I called it and didn't push any further. Thanks for the guide, can only imagine the amount of effort it takes to trial and error all this stuff!
Thank you so much for watching, and for the kind words! It seems that the newer Decks are better thermally, but I haven't noticed a trend for age vs ability just yet. I'm glad that you got good results!
-40/-40/-40 UV (no OC: prefer battery life, better temps & quieter fan) -45/-45/-45 worked too but also preferred it to be rock stable. 64gb deck bought during sale and upgraded to 512gb nvme and running win11 great video!
Thank you so much, this video is incredibly easy to follow along, you give clear stats and instructions, you explain everything well, and i feel like i got it all quite easily and im a first time overclocker. I was able to increase the tdp allowance to 20 watts, got an undervolt of -65/-65/-55, an overclock of the cpu at 4100 gpu at 1900, on a Q4 64gb with a 256gb drive, I couldnt be happier with the results ive gotten, they are far better than anything i could have expected, i keep most games between 12-18watts now that i have that allowance to go above 15, and ive have had a much more stable experience with them, 20watts is only for the games that REALLY need it, and my battery life is still pretty good, alot better in some cases, i got some amazing undervolts, it was all far far easier than i ever could have expected, just go in small increments, and keep testing as you go along, see an issue and go back. The steam deck really allows you to tinker with it and i love that, thank you again for all your tutorials and optimization guides, i cant wait for the advanced overclocking video whenever that comes, your gonna blow it out of the park
Cant wait to see this, i already undervolted mine. it is very quiet with liquid metal + thermal puddy and so on. its very silent and much better then stock. you can also test if the undervolt is stable when reducing the clock speed in power tools. i had a crash with -60MHz and Speed lowered to 800MHz. on higher clocks i had no problems. i went with -40MHz on all 3 When we undervolt and stay at the 15W stock TDP, we are already overclocking a bit because the SD can push it already longer at high clocks with the more efficient Undervolt.
If the CMOS reset method doesn't work, unplug the battery and hold the power button for a few seconds. After that you can boot into UMAF again and undo your changes. No need to RMA :)
@@cryobyte33 these buttons are read directly by KBC (IT8390 chip) which is fired up before even the APU starts. The KBC is basically the brain of the board and communicates with the rest of the components. If the board is discharged with any residual load then it must be able to reset with the keys combination. I've tried to reset "CMOS" from a very edgy negative offsets and it ran successfully. Kudos for your hard work!
Your videos about over and underclocking have been incredibly helpful. Your clear and concise explanations have helped me to better understand how these concepts relate to gaming performance. Your expertise in this area is evident, and I am grateful for the knowledge you have shared. You're a real gem in the gaming community, and I appreciate the time and effort you put into creating such informative content. Keep up the great work!
This guide has been tremendously helpful! I’ve been trying to push more performance out of it but had no idea how I could do it. This guide was easy to learn, and very informative on what the options actually do. I was terrified to brick my deck, but so far so good! Thanks for the work you do on Deck. It’s really such a great value system and is a fun way to learn.
Awesome Video & explanation as well. I got to -40/-40/-40 on all 3, and didn't want to push beyond that. I figured that'll be good enough for now. I didn't attempt the TDP increase, as I was worried I'd get into a state where it may need to be RMA'd, and I don't want to be without my Steam Deck! (edited) - My Deck is July 2022, and 256GB.
just to help the YT Algo out on your video: It is absolutely great and your slow way of working this through, can help a lot of people to do the same thing, without being a nerd in any way. Great Job!
Cryobyte33 I love your videos because of how well made they are and how they explain every single process, why it should be done and how it improves overall performance
AHHH, the video I was waiting for! Glad I could help you get that Deck. You are the real legend helping all of us Deckers get much more out of the Steam Deck.
Thank you again SO MUCH, it wouldn't have happened so soon without you! I was able to really push the Deck further than I'd have been able to otherwise 😁
@@cryobyte33 Watched the video and now going back and doing the undervolting and overclocking. Got the undervolting done (-30,-30,-30) and it is running nice. Now time to up the TDP and clocks. Not going for anything crazy, so probably will just do 20w and 200MHz on CPU and GPU. A lot of people have talked about the undervolting in the past, but I specifically waited for you to do this video as I know you break it down "Barney Style" to make it super easy to follow and do.
Thanks so much!! Very clear, easy to follow instructions. At no stage was I confused as to what the next step was. Also great explanation of the rationale for doing this. I got a -20, -20, -20 and am very happy with the results. Didn't overclock or mess with the TDP. Maybe for another time! You're amazing!
I followed your instructions for my Q3 2022 deck, and it worked perfectly for me. I had my eye on this type of overclocking for a while, but was too afraid to try it on my own. I ended up with -30, -30, -30 for the undervolt. For the overclock, I went with 23watts, 4000mhz(cpu)/2000mhz(gpu). No stability issues and gained around 10% overall. The main thing that I noticed was the lack of studdering that I was experiencing in several titles, before these changes. I was already using the default fan curve, so the temp increase was minimal (+2c or so) but with louder fan sounds. It doesn't bother me. The fans were around 5,200rpm, normally 4,200-4,700rpm. Thank you for your hard work, it's greatly appreciated! EDIT: I had much more success running an overvolt and overclock without the wattage increase. Try the undervolt and overclock without changing the wattage.
EDIT: I found this actually runs better with "auto" watt (no changes) but still running the overclock 3800cpu/1800gpu and undervolt at -30/-30/-30. Try the changes with out changing the wattage first! The increased wattage was the cause of my instability. Much more stable, for my q3 2022 deck.
@@cryobyte33 You definitely do more extensive testing than I do! Based on the benchmarks and games that I ran, I noticed most of them were about 3 FPS higher max and similar lows without the overclocked wattage. It appeared to be more stable. However, it could be something else on my system/deck that's causing this issue with the wattage increase. I recently removed the under volt from the GPU only, no wattage overclock and run at 3700/1700. This seems to be the best balance for me personally. EDIT: I'm also running your disk optimizations but only 1gb for RDR2 when I play that.
@@cryobyte33 You're right. Your OC works better, I copied it exactly and it's faster now. It wasn't before, for whatever reason. It seems like every time to try to test my deck I get different results! I landed on -40 -40 -40 3800/2000 with the TDP at 23w.
This is awesome. I've been undervolting / overclocking my regular PCs' GPUs and CPUs for years. I knew the Steam Deck existed but never looked much into it. My coworker brought his in and I was impressed. Started Youtubing it and see it's such an impressive piece of hardware. Just bought the 64GB version and once it arrives, I'm buying the 1TB Sabrient Rocket SSD made for it. I'm into classic console emulation so I'll load that in too ... and going to attempt to undervolt/overclock per this video.
So i have just discovered your videos the other day and decided to give this a try. I downloaded and used your recommended settings for CryoUtilities 2.1 then I started messing with undervolting and overclocking. I have had good results so far and have been careful. So far I have pushed it to -30 across the board. TDP of 21W, 4000 CPU and 2000 GPU. I feel like that is good enough. I don't want to risk bricking my Deck. I may scale back to -20 on all three and 20W later. I want to thank you for your hard work and sharing it with all of us. I look forward to seeing any future videos covering this topic and if you find any other useful information regarding overclocking etc.
Again, you've outdone yourself, you have my only 2 youtube comments in the past year because frankly, I couldn't care less about commenting on most videos. I have to say, it's great to see the information presented in such a way that people unfamiliar can follow along, but people with more background like myself can just get a concise list of tools and tweaks to get going. Hopefully this gets to as many people as possible, hopefully even prompting valve to add more direct support for tweaks like this directly into the deck BIOS.
Also as an asside , it would be really cool to see this come to CryoUtilities where possible, if this could be a sort of "Use at your own risk" OC section to streamline the process but I'm not sure if this would be possible to do while booted into SteamOS but could be worth some investigation.
Thank you so much for continuing to watch (and comment on) the videos! It means a lot to have someone enjoy them so much, let alone so many ❤️ As for UV/OC in CU, I plan to implement something in CU 2.2 that will allow you to access the menu from regular BIOS, and make it so you don't need Smokeless anymore. I can't implement all the actual changes in the OS safely, though, so it won't be a 1-click option.
Hey, Isaac from Pixel Deck here....always enjoy your videos. This goes WAY beyond what we would ever handle, but I personally appreciate these vids as a longtime fellow PC nerd.
I'm not currently a Steam Deck owner, but I appreciate deeply your passion to it and been watching your channel for a while now. Good job man, I hope to be able to be a part of the steam deck community soon!
Started with how to recover from bad settings with CMOS reset, used Goku in the thumbnail. Amazing work as always. You are a pilar of the steam deck power user community and we don't deserve you. Thanks for everything!
Wow, this is so informative. Even though I'm not going to OC my Deck, because it's good enough for me, I'm really grateful for explaining these OC procedures.
This is awesome! I love getting the most out of my laptop and desktop gpu's with undervolting. It's such an under represented topic on tech channels. I honestly didn't expect the deck would be this tweakable. I'll definitely be giving this a go. Thank you for all your hard work. Also, it's great to see you! I get stressed about stuff like that, I only ever post my art on social media and RUclips, I don't like showing my face or even talking for that matter. But there's no denying it engages the audience more when they can put a face to the voice they've been listening to. I'm always looking forward to whatever deck topic you come up with next and it's great to see how your channel is growing. Keep it up 🤟
@@cryobyte33 I've been doing so much more with the deck than I expected would be possible when I bought it. A lot of that has been made possible with your guidance and hard work with things like the cryobyte utility. Recently I even went as far as to make windows bootable sd card because I really wanted to try gamepass and zbrush on deck. It's such a flexible and practical device that has totally changed my outlook on portable PC's. So much so I may very well not bother with having a laptop in the future. A future handheld like the RoG ally or a steam deck 2 with an 8 core 16 thread cpu would be all the power I'd need to replace my laptop fully as an on the go device. When I dock the deck and plug in my portable screen I can work surprisingly well in the professional applications I regularly use. Anyway, just gushing a bit, what a device!
@@cryobyte33 hey, I'm having a weird deck issue with smokeless. Recently I made what now seems like a mistake of trying out the main channel in steam os. I was curious to check out the features they are testing. Long story short it started causing controller issues with a game I regularly play so I decided to switch back to stable and reapply settings that got reset like 4gb of vram. I also wanted to go back into smokeless to check that my undervolt was still set up and if not then reapply that as well. And then the weirdest thing happened. After booting into smokeless and clicking device manager, the amu menu options are just missing. Instead of 4 sub menus there are only 2 now. I've tried everything I can think of to bring them back. I wiped the USB key, formatted it again, re-downloaded smokeless, nada. I even went as far as factory resetting my deck and doing everything fresh, but when I boot into smokeless the menus are still vanished. Weird right? I know now I probably shouldn't have installed main channel, who knows what kind of low level stuff that might have changed, I'm just surprised a factory reset didn't seem to undo whatever is causing this. I'm at a loss and a bit bummed as it seems I won't be able to undervolt anymore. I doubt there's much to be done about this, but hopefully you find this info noteworthy and potentially useful.
@@Orain88 I'm sorry for the delay here, but BIOS 115 on the main channel breaks Smokeless completely. I'm working on testing a replacement, but I'm not sure if it'll pan out yet so stay tuned!
@@cryobyte33 no worries. Man, I really wish I'd know beforehand 😅 Do you happen to know if it's possible to roll back the bios? I did the factory reset but I guess that didn't touch the Bios main channel installed. Thanks for your help and advice. Much appreciated!
Thank you so much for this awesome tutorial video. The effort and the support of this gaming beast such as yourself makes it worth every penny spent on this device. Since you'd like to gather some data regarding the silicon lottery, here are my results. -40/-30/-30 (I did get to -40/-35/-35 but didn't want to push further. I also pulled back to -35/-30/-25 for my daily use) 4000/2000 (I pulled back to 3800/1850 for my daily use to extend the battery life) I am also running my games mostly at 40Hz to get most out of the built in battery. I get the feeling that we will eventually get an aftermarket battery with a higher capacity to make this a portable warrior. At this point, I do not envy all these higher spec'd handheld PC's that are flooding the market these days. Thanks again.
If you were changing the clock speeds at 100 each time, this must have taken bloody ages!! I always appreciate your videos Cryo. Thanks for your hard work.
I've been wondering does your back hurt from carrying this system so goddamn hard? Thank you very much for making my decent SD experience a great one!!
Great video as always. Was waiting for a youtube review from a reliable source on the process of setting up overclocking as well as doing some benchmarking to see if its worth it. Will definitely give it a shot, thanks!
I personally think this is the best tech tutorial ever, SD related or not. It's so well organized I didn't skip a second in this video. Keep it up bud!
Like Spolt I also achieved -40 -40 -40. I also tested -50-50-50 but I was worried that I would pushing my luck. I also tried 3.8ghz on the CPU and 1800mhz on the GPU at 21W TDP but I wasn't happy with the results. Ended up reverting to just the undervolt to preserve battery life and help sustain those OG higher clocks for longer. I have a Q4 2022 512gb Steam Deck and I guess I won the Silicon Lottery. Cheers for your hard work, in depth tutorials and analysis. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for watching and sharing! Based on the results I've seen now, it seems like I was moderately lucky, and you were lucky. I've seen undervolts as high as -90/-80/-80! Sorry for the delay, still catching up to all the comments!
Happy Good Friday, Kyle God bless you and the family with an amazing Easter 🐣 weekend! Keep up the great work for our fantastic steam deck community, I will share the video on Facebook and LinkedIn as usual 🦉 I got in a good leg workout last night, and I trained back the night before, the soreness is just right and I had an amazing protein smoothie when I got to work. I’ve been spending a lot of the day thinking about how blessed I am and being present. 206 days no alcohol 🏆🥇 Thank God for Andrew Huberman!
Thank you so much, happy Easter to you and yours, and I'm proud of you for being sober! I've had close friends in similar situations and I know how difficult it can be, so keep up the good work ❤️
First of all...Thank you brother for everything your doing!!. Here is what I've got so far to be stable...still tweaking. CPU - 3.8 GHZ GPU - 1.9 GHZ TPD (fast & slow) - 28W (I'll usually play at 18w to 20w on most games but with undervolt at -40 i can run 25w on some games without hitting thermal limit. Mafia definitive edition and a couple others will start heating up the deck near 98-100c but only at higher TDB above 20w when i pause the game for some reason, could be something to do with the way the game map is loaded in the start screen.) UNDERVOLT -50/-45/-45 Guess I just got lucky with this one. (Still tweaking at the moment This is all obviously including CryoUtilities and all of its corresponding recommended settings.
I'm still tweaking so those number are going to change. Just found out cyber punk won't play so I found more stable numbers. -50 -45 -45 I'll keep messing around a bit and post some more after work :) thanks again for everything brother. I love this stuff. Wish I had your wealth of knowledge but I'm getting there slowly.
I recently graduated from a cybersecurity program at K-State but honestly I'd love to work under you as an intern as I feel I would learn a lot of valuable skills.
Cybersecurity is something I really need to spend more time on! Aside from the obvious, I'm woefully uninformed 😅 As for the internship, I'll have to decline for several reasons, but I really appreciate the enthusiasm and hope to see you around 🫶
Well done! The only information that I miss in this material is how the temperatures changed when using individual settings. It would be great to see the averaged values along with the rest of the information. THANK YOU FOR THE GREAT WORK YOU HAVE DONE Greetings from Poland
thank you 😊 my highest (lowest?) stable voltage offsets were -30, -40, -40, and I increased my max TDP too. I think I'll refrain from overclocking, and I'm going to keep using the generous TDP limits I usually do (like factorio runs almost just as well at 5W compared to 15W or 20W) to get more battery life most of the time. but if I'm already plugged in, it's nice to be able to whip open power tools and crank it :D
Wow dude! Excellent writing, filming, editing, and fantastic technical knowledge. Very organized too. You're awesome man. Im going to try this on my deck soon.
I probably won’t do this for a little while - my deck is due to arrive today and I want to have the stock experience for a little while - but I just wanted to pop in and say thank you for everything you’re doing. I’m definitely going to run CU on my stock deck! My only misgiving is that the graphs you show are sometimes not on the screen for long enough to actually read them without pausing the video. This is a VERY minor gripe and might not be to everyone’s tastes, but wanted to put it out there as a consideration for future videos, or maybe you could upload the graphs somewhere for us to go and scroll through at our leisure? In any case, you are doing excellent work and while you don’t need some random guy on the internet to tell you, I wanted to say thank you again. It’s thanks to people like you that the community I’ve encountered seems so overwhelmingly positive about the future of the deck!
Thank you so much for watching, for using CU, and for the feedback! For the graphs, I have good news, check out SDHQ! For this video, here's the link to the companion article for this video: steamdeckhq.com/news/undervolting-and-overclocking-push-your-steam-deck-beyond-its-limits/ I hope this helps supplement the videos for your enjoyment!
I love geeking out over this type of stuff. It amazes me how we can push the limits of the Deck. I just wish there was a Linux app we could run in desktop mode to see how far we can push under clock before tinkering and testing.
Unfortunately that would be a big security risk, so it's better that we don't 😅 I do agree that I wish there was a simpler Linux benchmarking tool, though!
I've been playing Fallout 76 on the Deck for the last month (am at more than 400 hours rn xD) and this is a god sent (gained like 5 constant FPS) Here are my settings (I pushed a bit but it was worth it!) : UV: 20/20/20 (was experiencing crash when going further on either value and / or freezes) TDP: 23W CPU/GPU speed: 4000/2000 I love it, it's been really great Thanks a lot for this tutorial, love it
Ok so these are the settings I ended up with, 40-40-40 undervolted, 20W TDP, 3800 CPU and 2000 GPU. I tried up to 4000 on CPU but noticed that fps would drop a lot in games and never reach the cpu threshold. I also noticed a big spike after 3800 cpu in temp and fan speed. The same was true of GPU to a lesser extent. Having looked into the differences I found that the fps gain was 9fps at most. I got better performance in many games but also had temps above 93C at 20W TDP and at 19W TDP I was sitting just under 90C. I think after all the testing I changed my mind a few times and decided to keep the under volt change but revert the overclock just because I don’t really know enough on this topic but have seen that with laptops that are overclocked it reduces their lifespan a lot. I plan to keep the deck as good as possible for as long as possible that’s the only reason I reverted the change. Like I said, performance was a lot better before and atleast I still get benefit from undervolt. (Old issues solved now) My boot manager isn’t seeing a usb and only works with microsd. The keyboard doesn’t register at all in boot menu, I have the exact same model of keyboard as you and it works fine outside the boot menu. I can navigate smokeless but can’t input numbers so but screwed. Edit:- I tried your reset for bios and keyboard works now. Don’t know what changed but just set vram back to 4gb after reset and everything just works now
Sorry for the delay, still catching up to all the comments! Thank you for sharing, it sounds like you got a similar place in the silicon lottery to me :) Thanks for watching!
I'm not one much for watching live streams, but I wish you the best of luck in that. You need more viewers and I really appreciate your work. When I get home tonight I'm going to try this out, I remember looking into this much earlier and seeing you had to short some things to get undervolts to work so I'm glad that isn't required anymore.
A really great and well-produced guide! Though I disagree with RMAing a deck for a failed overclock or undervolt UNLESS you make it clear to Valve what you did when you submit the request. Just submitting a generic RMA without specifying is lying by omission. I wish you had pointed this out in the video. That said I'm still glad you made it as it's there's a lot of helpful info and having a video guide will make this a lot more accessable. I wish you success in the future!
That's on me, I honestly thought it implicit that you should be truthful when reaching out to support but on hindsight it might not be... Sorry for the lapse of judgement 😓 Edit: I can't do much, but I made a new pinned comment stressing this, THANK YOU for pointing it out!
@@cryobyte33 No worries, it's easy to forget about things like that when making such a huge video. Glad you addressed it! Thanks again for such a great in-depth guide!
Appreciate the video. I was able to undervolt to 60-60-50 before it became unstable. I sadly never saw any temp differences when running Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmarks.
Since I spent a lot of time with this video today I just wanted to say I really love your videos. They're always very comprehensive and I learn a bit about computers despite being a nerd.
I did the undervolt! I got -30, -25, -25 and saw temps drop 4 deg, and battery life increase 15 min on RE4 Remake to 3 hrs 5 min (time/batt). I tried -30, -30, -30 but the game started getting 30 min less battery life with 65 temp vs 55, and turning system off the black screen would stay back-lit. Droped the last two values to -25 and it solved those problems. This is amazing!
Managed to get 30/20/40 undervolt and no problems so far.(did have to revert from 50 on the gpu that was rough to get back to boot). Im considering a small overclock on the cpu but its a pretty time consuming process. I didn't notice a significant change in average power usage from stock in the steam overlay, but the frame rate/timing was MUCH smoother. Played Elden Ring for 2h 46m 100%-22% bat. low preset, high AA, 720p, 30fps cap.
Power usage will only decrease if the hardware isn't driven a bit harder as a result. Since you noticed smoother frame times in ER, I'd guess that the CPU had trouble maintaining speed before but now it can pull a bit more power. Battery life evens out but you got better results 🙂 Thank you for watching, as always!
Great video. Thankyou for pointing out the difference between these tweaks and CryoUtilities. These tweaks are a bit much for me but I appreciate the time you put into these videos for the community!
For those of you following this tutorial in 2024. Undervolting is in the default Steam BIOS now. To access, hold volume up during boot. All the undervolting settings are in the advanced section but only allows you to go down to -50mv.
The face of our hero!
Thanks for watching, hopefully I'll be on camera in most videos from now on 😉
Yo man you look good! Thanks for your good work!
I thought he was a Reddit mod at first.
No this can't be him, surely
@@cryobyte33 do it on all the videos. Thanks for what you do
It's people like you who have and share legitimate knowledge that keep the tech world going. You're gonna go places!
Thank you for watching, and for the kind words! I hope the video helped you 🙂
Knowledge is unlimited power
*palpatine style*
Just to be VERY clear: If you cause harm to the Deck by following this guide and reach out to Valve to do an RMA, please be truthful about the cause and don't lie about it! Valve has been nothing but great to the community, and I wouldn't want to cause ill-will with them!
UPDATE: Newer BIOS versions break Smokeless_UMAF, I'm working on a fix so stay tuned!
I'm not going to do this because I'm not unsatisfied with what I already have but do you think in the future Valve will make an update where you can get more CPU and GPU while being plugged into the power source?
With great power comes great responsibility...and accountability.
@@VegitoBlackityBlack The issue is the cooling solution. I don't believe there's a way to cool the deck even with an external solution that would warrant much of a boost. It would make more sense that you can plug into a dock that plugs into an external GPU so the heat is on that and not added to the deck.
This. People, please dont be like the kinds of douches that post about how they lie to RMA people when they themselves effed their hardware
@@VegitoBlackityBlack it’s possible, but unlikely. They’d need to overhaul a lot of the OS to get the clocks to behave correctly and that would be a lot of development.
We all won the lottery with the existence of this channel. Thank you, King K.
Thank you so much, I missed this since I was on stream 😭🙏
Finally done with my tests - T'was a long day!
*Edit*: Did some more tests, updated the findings!
Steam Desk tested: 256GB Q4 2022
Max UV: 55/55/55 - At GPU UV of minus 60mV, I started seeing some crashes and artifacts during my tests (listed down below). I was also experiencing artifacts in tests that I can't specify yet, but I will add them to the comment afterwards. 55mV was stable across the board so I'm sticking with that.
TDP: 18W - This wasn't a question of "can I go higher", but a question of "*do* I want to go higher". The OC I chose should explain why I stick to 18W. I had it set on 19W before, but testing with Powertools showed that the clocks handle it in 18W or even 17W just fine.
OC: 3850/1950 (+350/+350) - I emulate a lot, and I wanted to see how far I can push the CPU without reaching AVG temp of 85c or higher. CPU was way too hot for me, even after cooling the CPU quite a bit. GPU handled a bit more OC after the extra UV I put the GPU through.
All of my tests were similar: 5-minute run on BOTW on CEMU for CPU load, 1 run of RE4 Remake mercenaries in the Village stage for GPU load.
In those *new* tests, BOTW went to around on max temps of 84c on CPU and 84c on GPU, with averages of around 79-81c on both. RE4 Remake went a bit lower with 83c max on CPU and 84c max on GPU, but with averages of 80c on both. Battery life was almost the same, with RE4 remake giving me 1:35 hours of battery life on the performance settings, and BOTW still giving me around 1:27 hours.
RE4 Remake with the combination of bigger UV and more GPU speed was able to run at a close 60FPS on performance settings which is quite frankly ridiculous, I wasn't expecting that big of a boost, but what do you know. In BOTW case the I am now able to pin the refresh rate on 45FPS and get a mostly consistent experience, I will not push it further than that, as I believe a bigger CPU UV would start to affect emulation as well. The CPU boost is a godsend for Switch and other high-end emulators that are heavily dependent on CPU. Luminescent Platinum, the big Brilliant Diamond mod stays almost exclusively in the 55+ FPS mark, and PLA is keeping 30FPS more consistently, though the issue is definitly a shader compilation thing. I trust the awesome guys at YUZU + Ryujinx to figure this out.
I still need to check the temp reading issue, but other than that - it was a great success. Again, fantastic video Kyle. You're giving this community the teachings it needs to grow and be better.
Don't underestimate what you're doing here. From one Zelda fan to another - glad I can contribute to you buying the new game :)
There is also videos about to overclock your Display to 70hz. Found it today ony YT
You're a legend, man! Thank you for yet another awesome donation, for the *extremely* detailed findings, and for the kind words ❤️🙏
I JUST reached 40K today, so keep an eye out for a stream announcement! I'll make sure it's on your sub wall a few days in advance if possible 😁
Should I overclock mine? What would you recommend
@@AaronHolden UV is usually a good practice. OC is always a risk, but I push my deck greatly as a Video Game Journalist, so having that extra power is always wanted. I also like to emulate and having that small boost to the CPU gives me a little more stable performance on my Switch and WiiU dumped games.
@@cryobyte33 You'd better! I missed the last one!
You're going places as a creator in the tech space no matter if you stick to only Deck content or not. Clear, concise, honest, and no fluff. Exactly what this community needed.
Thank you for watching and for the kind words, I'm just happy I'm able to help ❤️
late to the party, but can strongly agree. best content so far on this topic.
Lots of other tech channels show you how to tinker with settings but not why. I really appreciate the time you take to explain what's going on with the settings that are changed. Keep up the amazing work!!
Thank you for letting me know that I'm focusing on the right things, and for watching!
I highly appreciate and love learning basics, fundamentals and advanced reasons and how things work that you go over in detail. One of my favorite things of your videos.
That's arguably the most important part of guides like this, at least for me
Dude, this is the most well-presented guide I've ever seen on youtube. This video is a masterclass on how to construct a youtube tutorial, and people should pay you for the lesson.
Thank you for watching, I'm glad the video was concise. I appreciate the kind words 😁
You are one of the very positive examples of why the linux community can shine: You make the steam deck even better for everyone by sharing your knowledge and helping lots of people for free. You are awesome, thank you.
Thank you so much for watching , the kind words, and for being subbed! I really appreciate it and am just here to help 🙂
@@cryobyte33 yo your the goat got my steam deck 5 days ago got so much set up and so much more too do! Adding this to my to-do list same with moonlight and duel booting!
I've had my Deck undervolted with raised clockspeed limits for a few months now. The biggest improvement for me that didn't involve increasing the TDP(which would reduce battery life and increase temperatures) was undervolting the GPU. My GPU now manages to hit over 1600mhz in some spots on the RDR2 benchmark where it would typically be below 1500mhz before. The results of this are that the Average FPS is slightly higher but more noticeably, the 1% lows are quite a bit better and I don't have stutter nearly as much in places where I assume the GPU was throttling against the TDP limits before.
Based on your observations, that sounds correct. I mention it near the end of the video, but it's all a balancing act of exactly how you want to run your Deck. I might make the "15w overclock" a portion of the advanced video if it comes to be 🙂
That would be great 👍
I’ve overclocked on the past but for my humble handheld a cooler running and more power efficient Deck with less stutters would appeal to me more than a potentially hotter running machine at the limit of its chip.
I think I will save the OC for the new Asus as it has double fans = better cooling… hopefully the standard unit isn’t already an OC’d device.
The Man, The Myth, the Legend. Thank you for all your tireless work on the Steam Deck.
Thank you for watching, man! I hope that it helps you out 🍻
Appreciate what you do for the community!
Thank you so much for donating, I'm really glad that I could help you out 😁
I just stuck with an UV of 20/20/20 as that's what seemed to work best and I usually use my deck plugged in, so I'm not too worried about battery life. Was able to get the OC of 4000/2000 and a TDP of 23 watts working so I'm pretty darn happy with the results. Thanks for the great video man. I've been keeping up with your releases and I appreciate the work you've put in to help all of us!
Thank you so much for sharing your results and watching the video!
This man has been teaching a master course in Linux with the steam deck. Most people just tell you what to do and you follow along. After these videos I walk away with actual new knowledge and understanding of what I just did, which then helps me out with random things here and there going forward. You deserve so much more man. Keep it up.
Thank you so much for the kind words, I'm just really happy to help and I'm glad that I was able to 😁
Yes! I am learning and it is great
The work you put in is unparalleled, your channel is a goldmine my friend. Thanks for everything you're doing for the community!!
Thank you for watching, I'm just happy I'm able to help 🙂
Keep it up mate! You’re the best !❤
Thank you so much for watching, as always! You're an absolute legend for the kind donation! 🍻
Your videos are well laid , organized and informative. i've been wanting to OC and undervolt my deck and this is a comprhensive tutorial.
That's great to hear, thank you for letting me know that it was helpful! 😁
You are going places. I watch tons of videos like this and your videos blow multi-million dollar channels out of the water. Thank you for your help!
Thank you so much for the kind words! I hope to get even better as I continue 😁
Not all hero’s wear capes! Your videos get better and better and you do such a great job explaining for people that don’t understand what’s going on. Thank you again for your hours and providing us with everything!
Thank you for watching, I'm happy you enjoy the content and I'm glad I'm able to help 😁
I actually did this before this video but I love that you did a video on this. I got -35 -35 -40 for the undervolt. I didn't increase the TDP but I set Max CPU clock to 3700. In games that are single threaded (some emulated stuff), the CPU does reach 3.7 GHz but not in games that require more power and are more multi-threaded. I don't really need any more CPU power at the moment so I am leaving things for now.
That's a perfectly valid way to leave it, the benefit of knowing the process is that you can choose exactly what the right balance for you is 😁
Thanks for watching!
I achieved -40 -40 -40. I tested to -50 -50 -50 but was worried that I might be pushing it. I chose extra stability, which was more important than a little extra undervolt. I also tried 3.8ghz on the CPU and 1800mhz on the GPU at 20W TDP. I ended up reverting and keeping the undervolt to preserve battery life. For reference, I have a Q4 2022 64gb Steam Deck with a 512gb upgraded SSD.
Awesome, thank you so much for sharing! That's a pretty big win on the Silicon lottery! 😁
Be aware, even if things are stable, actual power draw, Temps and battery life can get worse with higher numbers. I was "stable" at -40, -25, -30, but I had higher power draw. The sweet spot for me was -30, -25, -25. Anything less or more produced higher power draw, higher temps and shorter projected battery life.
@@ActionJaxonH I'm pulling 2.5w less at maximum power draw
@Jaxon Holden That's interesting, though. I wonder if your system clocked higher to compensate for the lower power draw.
What are you using to check power draw?
My god, this video is everything I wanted to know about both Undervolting and Overclocking and then some! You've explained it all perfectly and I will definitely be trying it on my Deck, but that might take a while since I'm quite busy at the moment. Also, can't wait to learn about the sentient rocks lmao
Thank you so much for watching as always, and I'm glad that you learned something from the video 😁
Thank you, mate! Very informative, detailed video. I am always waiting for your content as much as my favorite shows! Seriously! I hope that you are able to continue doing the things you do, as our community needs you so very much! Cheers!! ❤
Thank you so much for the kind donation! It goes a long way, and I'm happy I helped you out! ❤️
I’d love to hear about HT/memory overclocking, which I’ve found can be more valuable than a pure CPU clock multiplier boost. Great work, as always!
It's a planned feature in an advanced overclocking video, if I can manage to tame these damn Samsung DIMMs. Thanks for watching!
You provide such an immense amount of value to this community. One of my favorite things is that you don’t blindly give advice, but educate us on our choices so that we can understand the changes we’re making and decide which ones are best for our individual situations. You make potentially daunting subjects easily digestible. Bravo yet again my friend. 👏🏻
You're the best man, that's exactly what I strive to do. I don't want to give advice as much as just allow for each person to make their own informed choices about each subject I teach ❤️
This video is sick. Fans are a bit loud for my taste running Hogwarts Legacy through my 1080p monitor during testing, but I figure that's probably a worst-case scenario. I'm also not used to the old Steam Deck fan curves. I may roll it back a bit or see if I can get away with some fan curve tweaks.
Ended up with a 30-30-30 underclock, 22w TDP, and 4000/2000 overclock. My deck is brand new. Based on the small sample size of your decks and mine, it looks like the newer Decks may be better overclockers. I'm lazy and impatient, so I didn't do the proper "reach instability then roll back" OC method. Once I was within spitting distance of your newer deck and stable, I called it and didn't push any further.
Thanks for the guide, can only imagine the amount of effort it takes to trial and error all this stuff!
Thank you so much for watching, and for the kind words! It seems that the newer Decks are better thermally, but I haven't noticed a trend for age vs ability just yet. I'm glad that you got good results!
-40/-40/-40 UV (no OC: prefer battery life, better temps & quieter fan)
-45/-45/-45 worked too but also preferred it to be rock stable.
64gb deck bought during sale and upgraded to 512gb nvme and running win11
great video!
Awesome, thank you for watching and sharing! I'm glad I could help you out 😁
Definitely not going down this path with my Deck, but I appreciate the video on how-to and some results. Thanks for doing the work.
Thank you for watching regardless, I'm happy I was able to help 🙂
Thank you so much, this video is incredibly easy to follow along, you give clear stats and instructions, you explain everything well, and i feel like i got it all quite easily and im a first time overclocker. I was able to increase the tdp allowance to 20 watts, got an undervolt of -65/-65/-55, an overclock of the cpu at 4100 gpu at 1900, on a Q4 64gb with a 256gb drive, I couldnt be happier with the results ive gotten, they are far better than anything i could have expected, i keep most games between 12-18watts now that i have that allowance to go above 15, and ive have had a much more stable experience with them, 20watts is only for the games that REALLY need it, and my battery life is still pretty good, alot better in some cases, i got some amazing undervolts, it was all far far easier than i ever could have expected, just go in small increments, and keep testing as you go along, see an issue and go back. The steam deck really allows you to tinker with it and i love that, thank you again for all your tutorials and optimization guides, i cant wait for the advanced overclocking video whenever that comes, your gonna blow it out of the park
Cant wait to see this, i already undervolted mine. it is very quiet with liquid metal + thermal puddy and so on. its very silent and much better then stock. you can also test if the undervolt is stable when reducing the clock speed in power tools. i had a crash with -60MHz and Speed lowered to 800MHz. on higher clocks i had no problems. i went with -40MHz on all 3
When we undervolt and stay at the 15W stock TDP, we are already overclocking a bit because the SD can push it already longer at high clocks with the more efficient Undervolt.
If I do everything he said in this vid, will it damage my deck at one point? 😅 and what is undervolting and overclocking, I’m new to this
If the CMOS reset method doesn't work, unplug the battery and hold the power button for a few seconds. After that you can boot into UMAF again and undo your changes. No need to RMA :)
This works if you don't go WAY too far, but I've been told that it doesn't if the SoC can't get enough power. Thank you for watching!
@@cryobyte33 these buttons are read directly by KBC (IT8390 chip) which is fired up before even the APU starts. The KBC is basically the brain of the board and communicates with the rest of the components. If the board is discharged with any residual load then it must be able to reset with the keys combination. I've tried to reset "CMOS" from a very edgy negative offsets and it ran successfully.
Kudos for your hard work!
@@GIBbeerDST i've broke my deck by setting -100/-100/-100. And nothing except reflashing bios helped. Just be aware of it.
@@VoCs1000 100 is this a joke
@@hte_tech nope :) previously i've set -80/-80/-80. And it works. But don't do it.
Your videos about over and underclocking have been incredibly helpful. Your clear and concise explanations have helped me to better understand how these concepts relate to gaming performance. Your expertise in this area is evident, and I am grateful for the knowledge you have shared. You're a real gem in the gaming community, and I appreciate the time and effort you put into creating such informative content. Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much for watching, I appreciate it and I hope that the video helped you out ❤️
This guide has been tremendously helpful! I’ve been trying to push more performance out of it but had no idea how I could do it. This guide was easy to learn, and very informative on what the options actually do. I was terrified to brick my deck, but so far so good!
Thanks for the work you do on Deck. It’s really such a great value system and is a fun way to learn.
Awesome Video & explanation as well. I got to -40/-40/-40 on all 3, and didn't want to push beyond that. I figured that'll be good enough for now. I didn't attempt the TDP increase, as I was worried I'd get into a state where it may need to be RMA'd, and I don't want to be without my Steam Deck! (edited) - My Deck is July 2022, and 256GB.
Fair enough, that's still a perfect way to runt he Deck! Enjoy the extra battery life! 😁
This is one of the best channels I've ever seen with regard to explaining the how and why behind tech tweaks. Great work!
Thank you for watching, I'm glad you enjoy the content 😁
I was waiting for this video since literally couple of days. You put so much effort for Deck community that you can't even imagine!
Thank you for watching, I'm just happy to help 😁
Managed to get a stable -40 -40 -40 undervolt; The golden 40 prevails once more!
Great video as always
Awesome, thank you for watching and sharing your results!
just to help the YT Algo out on your video: It is absolutely great and your slow way of working this through, can help a lot of people to do the same thing, without being a nerd in any way. Great Job!
Thank you for watching, I'm happy you enjoy the content 😁
excellent report, it is informative and well written.
Thank you so much for the donation, it really helps me spend this much time on the videos!
Cryobyte33 I love your videos because of how well made they are and how they explain every single process, why it should be done and how it improves overall performance
Thank you for watching, I was hoping to provide as much information as possible, so I'm glad it came out well 😁
AHHH, the video I was waiting for! Glad I could help you get that Deck. You are the real legend helping all of us Deckers get much more out of the Steam Deck.
Thank you again SO MUCH, it wouldn't have happened so soon without you! I was able to really push the Deck further than I'd have been able to otherwise 😁
@@cryobyte33 Watched the video and now going back and doing the undervolting and overclocking. Got the undervolting done (-30,-30,-30) and it is running nice. Now time to up the TDP and clocks. Not going for anything crazy, so probably will just do 20w and 200MHz on CPU and GPU. A lot of people have talked about the undervolting in the past, but I specifically waited for you to do this video as I know you break it down "Barney Style" to make it super easy to follow and do.
@@Kirky64 Agreed and awesome "Barney Style" reference :-)
Oh wow, you're at 40k subs almost. Keep it going, that's super impressive. Best of luck with further growing the best Steam Deck oriented channel.
Thank you for watching, I'm just happy I'm able to help the community 🙂
I cannot believe you answered, every single one of my questions as the video progressed. You truly are a legend.
Thanks so much!! Very clear, easy to follow instructions. At no stage was I confused as to what the next step was. Also great explanation of the rationale for doing this.
I got a -20, -20, -20 and am very happy with the results. Didn't overclock or mess with the TDP. Maybe for another time!
You're amazing!
I followed your instructions for my Q3 2022 deck, and it worked perfectly for me. I had my eye on this type of overclocking for a while, but was too afraid to try it on my own. I ended up with -30, -30, -30 for the undervolt. For the overclock, I went with 23watts, 4000mhz(cpu)/2000mhz(gpu). No stability issues and gained around 10% overall. The main thing that I noticed was the lack of studdering that I was experiencing in several titles, before these changes. I was already using the default fan curve, so the temp increase was minimal (+2c or so) but with louder fan sounds. It doesn't bother me. The fans were around 5,200rpm, normally 4,200-4,700rpm. Thank you for your hard work, it's greatly appreciated!
EDIT: I had much more success running an overvolt and overclock without the wattage increase. Try the undervolt and overclock without changing the wattage.
Very similar results to me, thank you for sharing and I'm glad that it helped you out! 😁
EDIT: I found this actually runs better with "auto" watt (no changes) but still running the overclock 3800cpu/1800gpu and undervolt at -30/-30/-30. Try the changes with out changing the wattage first! The increased wattage was the cause of my instability.
Much more stable, for my q3 2022 deck.
@@larriice Interesting, I checked that but my results were only about 2% better than stock, as opposed to 7%+
@@cryobyte33 You definitely do more extensive testing than I do!
Based on the benchmarks and games that I ran, I noticed most of them were about 3 FPS higher max and similar lows without the overclocked wattage. It appeared to be more stable. However, it could be something else on my system/deck that's causing this issue with the wattage increase.
I recently removed the under volt from the GPU only, no wattage overclock and run at 3700/1700. This seems to be the best balance for me personally.
EDIT: I'm also running your disk optimizations but only 1gb for RDR2 when I play that.
@@cryobyte33 You're right. Your OC works better, I copied it exactly and it's faster now. It wasn't before, for whatever reason. It seems like every time to try to test my deck I get different results!
I landed on -40 -40 -40
3800/2000 with the TDP at 23w.
This is awesome. I've been undervolting / overclocking my regular PCs' GPUs and CPUs for years. I knew the Steam Deck existed but never looked much into it. My coworker brought his in and I was impressed. Started Youtubing it and see it's such an impressive piece of hardware. Just bought the 64GB version and once it arrives, I'm buying the 1TB Sabrient Rocket SSD made for it. I'm into classic console emulation so I'll load that in too ... and going to attempt to undervolt/overclock per this video.
That's awesome to hear, thank you for sharing and I'm excited for your Deck to arrive! 😁
Wow. The level of guidance is next level. Very enjoyable watch and your voice is enjoyable and easy to understand. Look forward to future vids.
Thank you so much for watching, and for the very kind words! I strive to make the content easily digestible so it means a lot to me ❤️
So i have just discovered your videos the other day and decided to give this a try. I downloaded and used your recommended settings for CryoUtilities 2.1 then I started messing with undervolting and overclocking. I have had good results so far and have been careful. So far I have pushed it to -30 across the board. TDP of 21W, 4000 CPU and 2000 GPU. I feel like that is good enough. I don't want to risk bricking my Deck. I may scale back to -20 on all three and 20W later. I want to thank you for your hard work and sharing it with all of us. I look forward to seeing any future videos covering this topic and if you find any other useful information regarding overclocking etc.
Thank you so much for watching and sharing your results! I'm happy that you were able to get a decent outcome using the video 🙂
Again, you've outdone yourself, you have my only 2 youtube comments in the past year because frankly, I couldn't care less about commenting on most videos. I have to say, it's great to see the information presented in such a way that people unfamiliar can follow along, but people with more background like myself can just get a concise list of tools and tweaks to get going. Hopefully this gets to as many people as possible, hopefully even prompting valve to add more direct support for tweaks like this directly into the deck BIOS.
Also as an asside , it would be really cool to see this come to CryoUtilities where possible, if this could be a sort of "Use at your own risk" OC section to streamline the process but I'm not sure if this would be possible to do while booted into SteamOS but could be worth some investigation.
Thank you so much for continuing to watch (and comment on) the videos! It means a lot to have someone enjoy them so much, let alone so many ❤️
As for UV/OC in CU, I plan to implement something in CU 2.2 that will allow you to access the menu from regular BIOS, and make it so you don't need Smokeless anymore. I can't implement all the actual changes in the OS safely, though, so it won't be a 1-click option.
Hey, Isaac from Pixel Deck here....always enjoy your videos. This goes WAY beyond what we would ever handle, but I personally appreciate these vids as a longtime fellow PC nerd.
Thanks for watching, I'm glad that you liked the video! It's not for everyone for sure, but the beauty of the Deck is that it gives us the option 🙂
This is absolutely fantastic!!! I was able to get a -40-40-40 with this video. Thank you.
Thank you for watching and for sharing your results 😁
The only guy I would trust when it comes to overclocking the steam deck. Thanks a lot for all the efforts. We really do love your channel ❤️👌
Thanks for watching, I'm just happy to help 😁
I'm not currently a Steam Deck owner, but I appreciate deeply your passion to it and been watching your channel for a while now. Good job man, I hope to be able to be a part of the steam deck community soon!
one of us!
one of us!
ONE of US!!
ONE of US!!
ONE OF US!!!
ONE OF US!!!
_ONE OF US!!!_
_ONE OF US!!!_
Thank you for watching, I'm glad you enjoy the content. Thank you for being here 😁
Started with how to recover from bad settings with CMOS reset, used Goku in the thumbnail. Amazing work as always. You are a pilar of the steam deck power user community and we don't deserve you. Thanks for everything!
Thank you for watching, I'm just happy I can help out in this community 🙂
Wow, this is so informative. Even though I'm not going to OC my Deck, because it's good enough for me, I'm really grateful for explaining these OC procedures.
Thank you for watching, I'm happy you were able to gain information regardless of whether your decide to overclock or not 😁
This is awesome! I love getting the most out of my laptop and desktop gpu's with undervolting. It's such an under represented topic on tech channels. I honestly didn't expect the deck would be this tweakable. I'll definitely be giving this a go. Thank you for all your hard work. Also, it's great to see you!
I get stressed about stuff like that, I only ever post my art on social media and RUclips, I don't like showing my face or even talking for that matter. But there's no denying it engages the audience more when they can put a face to the voice they've been listening to.
I'm always looking forward to whatever deck topic you come up with next and it's great to see how your channel is growing. Keep it up 🤟
Thank you so much for watching, the kind words, and for being so invested in the videos ❤️
@@cryobyte33 I've been doing so much more with the deck than I expected would be possible when I bought it. A lot of that has been made possible with your guidance and hard work with things like the cryobyte utility. Recently I even went as far as to make windows bootable sd card because I really wanted to try gamepass and zbrush on deck. It's such a flexible and practical device that has totally changed my outlook on portable PC's. So much so I may very well not bother with having a laptop in the future. A future handheld like the RoG ally or a steam deck 2 with an 8 core 16 thread cpu would be all the power I'd need to replace my laptop fully as an on the go device. When I dock the deck and plug in my portable screen I can work surprisingly well in the professional applications I regularly use.
Anyway, just gushing a bit, what a device!
@@cryobyte33 hey, I'm having a weird deck issue with smokeless. Recently I made what now seems like a mistake of trying out the main channel in steam os. I was curious to check out the features they are testing.
Long story short it started causing controller issues with a game I regularly play so I decided to switch back to stable and reapply settings that got reset like 4gb of vram. I also wanted to go back into smokeless to check that my undervolt was still set up and if not then reapply that as well. And then the weirdest thing happened. After booting into smokeless and clicking device manager, the amu menu options are just missing. Instead of 4 sub menus there are only 2 now.
I've tried everything I can think of to bring them back. I wiped the USB key, formatted it again, re-downloaded smokeless, nada. I even went as far as factory resetting my deck and doing everything fresh, but when I boot into smokeless the menus are still vanished. Weird right?
I know now I probably shouldn't have installed main channel, who knows what kind of low level stuff that might have changed, I'm just surprised a factory reset didn't seem to undo whatever is causing this. I'm at a loss and a bit bummed as it seems I won't be able to undervolt anymore.
I doubt there's much to be done about this, but hopefully you find this info noteworthy and potentially useful.
@@Orain88 I'm sorry for the delay here, but BIOS 115 on the main channel breaks Smokeless completely. I'm working on testing a replacement, but I'm not sure if it'll pan out yet so stay tuned!
@@cryobyte33 no worries. Man, I really wish I'd know beforehand 😅 Do you happen to know if it's possible to roll back the bios? I did the factory reset but I guess that didn't touch the Bios main channel installed.
Thanks for your help and advice. Much appreciated!
Thank you so much for this awesome tutorial video. The effort and the support of this gaming beast such as yourself makes it worth every penny spent on this device. Since you'd like to gather some data regarding the silicon lottery, here are my results.
-40/-30/-30 (I did get to -40/-35/-35 but didn't want to push further. I also pulled back to -35/-30/-25 for my daily use)
4000/2000 (I pulled back to 3800/1850 for my daily use to extend the battery life)
I am also running my games mostly at 40Hz to get most out of the built in battery. I get the feeling that we will eventually get an aftermarket battery with a higher capacity to make this a portable warrior. At this point, I do not envy all these higher spec'd handheld PC's that are flooding the market these days.
Thanks again.
Thank you for watching, and for sharing your results! I also get the feeling that we'll get a bigger battery at some point 😁
what an absolute legend, this guy
Thank you so much for your undervolting guide! My Steamdeck has stayed strong and stable with a 45, 50, 45 undervolt.
If you were changing the clock speeds at 100 each time, this must have taken bloody ages!!
I always appreciate your videos Cryo. Thanks for your hard work.
The video took about 93 hours, all things considered 😅 Thank you for watching!
@@cryobyte33 jeez, that's dedication, mate! They are always interesting video's. Always seem to learn something!
I've been wondering does your back hurt from carrying this system so goddamn hard?
Thank you very much for making my decent SD experience a great one!!
lmfao you got a real laugh out of me and my wife, thanks for that 😂
Thank you for watching, and I hope this helps out!
Is there a new guide for this? Because this no longer works
Same here!!!
No. Ha
Nice to see you on Video :) Cheers m8 and thanks for all you have done for the community!
Thank you for watching, I'm just happy that I'm able to help 🙂
Thanks a million for the guide I got 30 30 30 undervolting and 4000 / 2000.
My deck is running great with this and CryoUtilities thank you
Thank you for watching and sharing your results, I'm happy to have helped!
This is a really well-made video. The content is succinct and well-organized, and you are a great presenter. Fantastic tutorial!
Thank you so much for watching, and for the kind words!
Great video as always. Was waiting for a youtube review from a reliable source on the process of setting up overclocking as well as doing some benchmarking to see if its worth it. Will definitely give it a shot, thanks!
Thank you for watching so soon after release, I hope that it helps you out, and I'm glad that you consider me a reliable source of information 🙂
My man! Thanks for your time and work! Glorious hairs by the way!
Thank you for watching, I'm trying to grow it out 😁
I personally think this is the best tech tutorial ever, SD related or not. It's so well organized I didn't skip a second in this video. Keep it up bud!
Thank you so much for the kind words, and to let me know that I'm on the right track! 😁
Like Spolt I also achieved -40 -40 -40. I also tested -50-50-50 but I was worried that I would pushing my luck. I also tried 3.8ghz on the CPU and 1800mhz on the GPU at 21W TDP but I wasn't happy with the results. Ended up reverting to just the undervolt to preserve battery life and help sustain those OG higher clocks for longer. I have a Q4 2022 512gb Steam Deck and I guess I won the Silicon Lottery. Cheers for your hard work, in depth tutorials and analysis. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for watching and sharing! Based on the results I've seen now, it seems like I was moderately lucky, and you were lucky. I've seen undervolts as high as -90/-80/-80!
Sorry for the delay, still catching up to all the comments!
I can tell you approach your videos a lot like Gamers Nexus. Precise, methodical, transparent. Awesome job!
Thank you for watching, I do my best to provide information as concisely as possible 🙂
Happy Good Friday, Kyle God bless you and the family with an amazing Easter 🐣 weekend!
Keep up the great work for our fantastic steam deck community, I will share the video on Facebook and LinkedIn as usual 🦉
I got in a good leg workout last night, and I trained back the night before, the soreness is just right and I had an amazing protein smoothie when I got to work. I’ve been spending a lot of the day thinking about how blessed I am and being present.
206 days no alcohol 🏆🥇
Thank God for Andrew Huberman!
Thank you so much, happy Easter to you and yours, and I'm proud of you for being sober! I've had close friends in similar situations and I know how difficult it can be, so keep up the good work ❤️
We def need an update for this because certain things don’t’ show up anymore after the update
You need to downgrade the bios to get things working again
First of all...Thank you brother for everything your doing!!.
Here is what I've got so far to be stable...still tweaking.
CPU - 3.8 GHZ
GPU - 1.9 GHZ
TPD (fast & slow) - 28W (I'll usually play at 18w to 20w on most games but with undervolt at -40 i can run 25w on some games without hitting thermal limit. Mafia definitive edition and a couple others will start heating up the deck near 98-100c but only at higher TDB above 20w when i pause the game for some reason, could be something to do with the way the game map is loaded in the start screen.)
UNDERVOLT
-50/-45/-45
Guess I just got lucky with this one. (Still tweaking at the moment
This is all obviously including CryoUtilities and all of its corresponding recommended settings.
Wow, global -50 is HUGE, you lucked out! Thank you so much for sharing, and I'm really happy that I was able to help make it happen 😁
I'm still tweaking so those number are going to change. Just found out cyber punk won't play so I found more stable numbers. -50 -45 -45
I'll keep messing around a bit and post some more after work :) thanks again for everything brother. I love this stuff. Wish I had your wealth of knowledge but I'm getting there slowly.
@@cryobyte33 Quick question. I can't seem to locate the correct information about, Fastppt and Slowppt. Do you know what these signify?
Thanks.
I recently graduated from a cybersecurity program at K-State but honestly I'd love to work under you as an intern as I feel I would learn a lot of valuable skills.
Cybersecurity is something I really need to spend more time on! Aside from the obvious, I'm woefully uninformed 😅
As for the internship, I'll have to decline for several reasons, but I really appreciate the enthusiasm and hope to see you around 🫶
Well done! The only information that I miss in this material is how the temperatures changed when using individual settings. It would be great to see the averaged values along with the rest of the information. THANK YOU FOR THE GREAT WORK YOU HAVE DONE Greetings from Poland
Thank you for watching! I actually do share temperatures for undervolting, but it seems to have slipped through for overclocking, sorry about that!
Been waiting for this. Excited to try it. Keep up the amazing work!
Awesome, I hope it helps you out! Thanks for watching 🫶
thank you 😊 my highest (lowest?) stable voltage offsets were -30, -40, -40, and I increased my max TDP too. I think I'll refrain from overclocking, and I'm going to keep using the generous TDP limits I usually do (like factorio runs almost just as well at 5W compared to 15W or 20W) to get more battery life most of the time. but if I'm already plugged in, it's nice to be able to whip open power tools and crank it :D
@@AFistfulOf4K lmao. but without power tools it's just not satisfying anymore 😭 I mean the fps, of course.
Thank you SO MUCH for watching, and answering a lot of comments while I still work to catch up here ❤️
Wow dude! Excellent writing, filming, editing, and fantastic technical knowledge. Very organized too. You're awesome man. Im going to try this on my deck soon.
Oh dude your cryo!!!!!! I just realized great to see you in person lol thanks for all you do
Hey, it's me, glad to have you here! Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video!
I probably won’t do this for a little while - my deck is due to arrive today and I want to have the stock experience for a little while - but I just wanted to pop in and say thank you for everything you’re doing. I’m definitely going to run CU on my stock deck!
My only misgiving is that the graphs you show are sometimes not on the screen for long enough to actually read them without pausing the video. This is a VERY minor gripe and might not be to everyone’s tastes, but wanted to put it out there as a consideration for future videos, or maybe you could upload the graphs somewhere for us to go and scroll through at our leisure?
In any case, you are doing excellent work and while you don’t need some random guy on the internet to tell you, I wanted to say thank you again. It’s thanks to people like you that the community I’ve encountered seems so overwhelmingly positive about the future of the deck!
Thank you so much for watching, for using CU, and for the feedback!
For the graphs, I have good news, check out SDHQ! For this video, here's the link to the companion article for this video: steamdeckhq.com/news/undervolting-and-overclocking-push-your-steam-deck-beyond-its-limits/
I hope this helps supplement the videos for your enjoyment!
Happy Easter brother! Hope you have a great weekend and keep up the great work. Thanks for all the great content
Happy Easter to you and yours, thank you for watching the video right after it went live! 😁
I love geeking out over this type of stuff. It amazes me how we can push the limits of the Deck. I just wish there was a Linux app we could run in desktop mode to see how far we can push under clock before tinkering and testing.
Unfortunately that would be a big security risk, so it's better that we don't 😅 I do agree that I wish there was a simpler Linux benchmarking tool, though!
I've been playing Fallout 76 on the Deck for the last month (am at more than 400 hours rn xD) and this is a god sent (gained like 5 constant FPS)
Here are my settings (I pushed a bit but it was worth it!) :
UV: 20/20/20 (was experiencing crash when going further on either value and / or freezes)
TDP: 23W
CPU/GPU speed: 4000/2000
I love it, it's been really great
Thanks a lot for this tutorial, love it
Nice to see your face man. Thank you for all your work for the community
Thank you for watching, I'm happy to contribute 🙂
Ok so these are the settings I ended up with, 40-40-40 undervolted, 20W TDP, 3800 CPU and 2000 GPU. I tried up to 4000 on CPU but noticed that fps would drop a lot in games and never reach the cpu threshold. I also noticed a big spike after 3800 cpu in temp and fan speed. The same was true of GPU to a lesser extent.
Having looked into the differences I found that the fps gain was 9fps at most. I got better performance in many games but also had temps above 93C at 20W TDP and at 19W TDP I was sitting just under 90C. I think after all the testing I changed my mind a few times and decided to keep the under volt change but revert the overclock just because I don’t really know enough on this topic but have seen that with laptops that are overclocked it reduces their lifespan a lot. I plan to keep the deck as good as possible for as long as possible that’s the only reason I reverted the change. Like I said, performance was a lot better before and atleast I still get benefit from undervolt.
(Old issues solved now)
My boot manager isn’t seeing a usb and only works with microsd.
The keyboard doesn’t register at all in boot menu, I have the exact same model of keyboard as you and it works fine outside the boot menu. I can navigate smokeless but can’t input numbers so but screwed.
Edit:- I tried your reset for bios and keyboard works now. Don’t know what changed but just set vram back to 4gb after reset and everything just works now
What is the production date/delivery date of your model?
Sorry for the delay, still catching up to all the comments!
Thank you for sharing, it sounds like you got a similar place in the silicon lottery to me :)
Thanks for watching!
@@cryobyte33 thanks for what you do and replying. Should I be concerned about 90-93C temps when playing games after heat soak?
@@NOVARIS Nah, the chip is rated up to 105C so if you can handle the noise then it's fine 🙂
I'm not one much for watching live streams, but I wish you the best of luck in that. You need more viewers and I really appreciate your work. When I get home tonight I'm going to try this out, I remember looking into this much earlier and seeing you had to short some things to get undervolts to work so I'm glad that isn't required anymore.
Thank you for watching, and the kind words! It's definitely a lot easier than hardmodding 😁
A really great and well-produced guide! Though I disagree with RMAing a deck for a failed overclock or undervolt UNLESS you make it clear to Valve what you did when you submit the request. Just submitting a generic RMA without specifying is lying by omission. I wish you had pointed this out in the video. That said I'm still glad you made it as it's there's a lot of helpful info and having a video guide will make this a lot more accessable. I wish you success in the future!
That's on me, I honestly thought it implicit that you should be truthful when reaching out to support but on hindsight it might not be... Sorry for the lapse of judgement 😓
Edit: I can't do much, but I made a new pinned comment stressing this, THANK YOU for pointing it out!
@@cryobyte33 No worries, it's easy to forget about things like that when making such a huge video. Glad you addressed it! Thanks again for such a great in-depth guide!
Appreciate the video. I was able to undervolt to 60-60-50 before it became unstable. I sadly never saw any temp differences when running Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmarks.
That's because the apu is boosting higher thanks to new thermal headroom
Since I spent a lot of time with this video today I just wanted to say I really love your videos. They're always very comprehensive and I learn a bit about computers despite being a nerd.
Thank you so much for watching the video, I appreciate the comment and letting me know that I'm on the right track with the content 😁
I want to thank you for your work and the 1s who helped with the new deck, this community is awesome
Thank you for watching, I agree this community is amazing 😁
I did the undervolt! I got -30, -25, -25 and saw temps drop 4 deg, and battery life increase 15 min on RE4 Remake to 3 hrs 5 min (time/batt). I tried -30, -30, -30 but the game started getting 30 min less battery life with 65 temp vs 55, and turning system off the black screen would stay back-lit. Droped the last two values to -25 and it solved those problems. This is amazing!
That's awesome to hear, I'm glad that you got more out of the Deck! 😁 Thanks for watching!
Awaiting a new deck from an RMA. Going to upvote without watching for now. This sounds epic! You really know how bring out the inner techie in folks.
Thank you for leaving a comment and like, even before watching! I wish you speed in the RMA process, and I hope you like the video when you watch it 😁
Thanks man! Was sent a new deck instead of replacement. Currently watching this video.
Commenting before I watch, Cyro you are such a legend in this community! Thank you so much for all your help
Thank you for commenting right off the bat, it does miracles for the algo ❤️
I hope you enjoy the video!
my favourite deck RUclips strikes again, great video man thank you so much for this!
Thank you for watching, I'm happy you enjoy the content 😁
What an absolute unit for the community.
Thanks for watching and being subbed, I really appreciate it ❤️
Managed to get 30/20/40 undervolt and no problems so far.(did have to revert from 50 on the gpu that was rough to get back to boot).
Im considering a small overclock on the cpu but its a pretty time consuming process.
I didn't notice a significant change in average power usage from stock in the steam overlay, but the frame rate/timing was MUCH smoother.
Played Elden Ring for 2h 46m 100%-22% bat.
low preset, high AA, 720p, 30fps cap.
Power usage will only decrease if the hardware isn't driven a bit harder as a result. Since you noticed smoother frame times in ER, I'd guess that the CPU had trouble maintaining speed before but now it can pull a bit more power. Battery life evens out but you got better results 🙂
Thank you for watching, as always!
Us Steam Deck enthusiasts appreciate everything you provide ❤️
Thank you for watching, I'm just happy I can help 🙂
Great video. Thankyou for pointing out the difference between these tweaks and CryoUtilities. These tweaks are a bit much for me but I appreciate the time you put into these videos for the community!
Thank you for watching, I'm just happy to help 🙂
commenting for the algorithm because you make fantastic content. much appreciated homie
Thanks fro the algo boost, and for watching! It means a lot to know that you guys enjoy it so much ❤️