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.
[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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Charging heats the battery, which adds to the heat that is caused while using the device. High temperature is bad for lithium batteries. Additionally, heavy load on the battery can mess with full charge detection, which can cause the battery to overcharge. Overcharging stresses the battery, which causes it to degrade faster. These won't cause a lot of degradation, but if you want to prolong your batteries, you might want to keep these in mind.
But apparently, none of the above affects the Steam Deck. According to some internet posts, Steam Deck uses pass through charging. It means that while the device is connected to a charger, it will take power from the charger, and not from the battery.
What you should do, is to try to keep lithium batteries between 30% and 80% charge level. The closer to full you charge a lithium battery, the more it will degrade. And similarly, the deeper the discharges are, the more degradation is caused. Steam Deck has a charge limiter you can use to stop the charging at your preferred level.
https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries
https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-415-how-to-charge-and-when-to-charge
EDIT: I have a power meter, and I just confirmed that Steam Deck, indeed, does take its power from a charger when one is connected. I charged the Deck up to the charge limit (75%) and then lowered the charge limit to 50%. After that, the charger was drawing about 0W while the Deck was off, about 10W while playing a 2D game (Hollow Knight: Silksong) and about 20W while playing a 3D game (FBC: Firebreak).
During charge, the charger drew 48W. The Steam Deck supposedly draws a maximum of 45W, which means my charger wastes 3 watts on a 45 watt load.