Valve’s new Steam deck OS update is a big one for steam Deck fans and I am factually talking about the fan in the handheld gaming PC. One frequent complaint about the steam Deck is its at times loud and high inclined fans whines even while playing lightweight games. Some including my colleague Sean have tried a DIY solution to fix the whine and substitute fans are already sold out despite being on sale for less than a week. With steam OS 3.2 though Valve introduced the latest OS forbidden fan curve that’s intended to make things better. This means that overall it’s smarter more responsive to what’s happening on and inside the steam Deck and quieter, especially in low custom situations. To see if I could observe a difference I installed the update and tried some games. In my short and enormously unempirical testing, my impression is that Valve has made some great improvements. Steam OS 3.2 also lets you change in-game refresh rates on the fly right from the three dots menu button. The default is 60HZ which can be frame limited to 60, 30, and 14FPS but you can now slide it down to 40HZ with frame limits at 40, 20, and 10FPS. Lowering refresh rate is one lever you can pull if you want to improve battery life.
