Thank you so much for this tutorial! I went along with your exact recommendation of using TFX and it works amazingly well, my temps are lower and so is my fan curve. I’ve had my deck about a year and to my surprise when I opened it up the paste was actually very dry and crackling, so good thing I changed it- thanks again mate I even posted my process on Reddit and shouted you out ha! Subbed btw 👌

Excellent video, thanks NJ, exactly what I was looking for!

I love the thickness of that paste

Excellent video :)

With this and the backplate, my Temps are boss. Next is heatsink and noctual fan, then I'm done. Nice video

Tried this and was very patient. Unfortunately my deck is experiencing crashes after a few minutes of gaming and occasionally artifacts everywhere. I know other have ppl have better luck but there’s also those who bricked their decks doing this. Gonna do some more testing before reaching out to valve though. Initially my temps were about 6 degrees lower, I also have the jsaux backplate. After about 10 minutes the thermal pad on the back plate became scorching hot. I know it’s suppose to but this was unbearable. The weird thing was that game overlay showed temps in the low - mid 70s Update: just be careful. I cleaned off the paste and tried again. So far so good, it’s been about 6 hours . Ff7 remake 1850 on gpu and 4000 on cpu settles at 85 degrees

New sub..killer content!🧐

You repasted the APU without unplugging the battery and it worked shockingly! I did unplug the battery and now the steam deck doesn’t want to turn on. Cool shi* will keep it unplugged for a while hopefully it get back on its mind again.

Thank you. What are your thoughts on the Arctic TP-3 thermalpads? Are they better than thermal paste or the PTM7950?

I went with the PTM7950 thermal pad. It was that or this paste you recommended. I definitely will be using this video as my guide. Short, sweet and to the damn point! 😊 I also will not be disconnecting my battery because it is a pain. I replaced my ssd day one of owning the deck. More worried about physically breaking the connection the statis discharge 😉 great video you earned a sub.

i have the updated fan model but i don't have those 2 foam things

Does anyone recommend putting (PK-3 thermal paste) Instead? I heard it’s expensive but high quality.

Hi NJ tech, may I ask which Termalright TFX specifically you used in the video? It seems there are many variants of the thermalright TFX paste. Hoping you can share a link of the detailed product for us to not make a mistake of buying different thermal paste. Thanks

I just undervolted the steam deck amazing results never goes above 60c Even on intensive games

dude, that numbers on the heatsink indicate the order of the screws, to screw and unscrew, anyway, great performance

I done everything what you did. But no change at all. I don’t know what I done wrong but can’t see any difference. Did you applied a thick or slim layer paste on the apu?

I've had this on my 6800 xt for 3 months now, it's only got better, hot spot temps are 20 degrees lower and gpu temps 10 degrees lower, this was compared to mx-4 previously

Can I ask if anyone else has had a proper time of it with the screws on the steam deck? So many on mine have been overtightened and are an absolute pain to get off.

Just changed mine too. Same brand. First time changing thermal paste. It was scary to do it by myself, but I did it. I live in Thailand. When SD idles it idles at around the hight 50s. It now idles at 51 or so. When gaming it went from something like 85-88 (playing Nioh 2) to 75 which was really amazing. Fan noise is much less annoying too.

What do you think about the nee graphene thermal pads ?

Would Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut suffer from "pump out"? Its what I've used on most of my stuff in the past.

What is that screwdriver?

Have you ever used IC diamond heat paste? Baesed on looks, that stuff seems super easy to spread to compared to the diamond paste. I think it usually takes me like 10 minutes to apply. It worked really good on my steamdeck.

Arctic mx6 also works

Would it help to put thermal paste on the copper pipe that touches on to the heat cover?

I changed the thermal paste for TFX following your guide but I had several problems... Firstly, once the battery was reconnected, the Deck wouldn't start. The LED was flashing white but nothing was happening, it took me several hours and several manipulations to get it to start up again. Then the games wouldn't start. The Deck would start up, I'd get the interface, but for each game I'd get the Steam loading logo but no game would launch. After several restarts, it would launch in desktop mode and finally in game mode. In the end, the temperatures are exactly the same, with only 1 or 2 degrees difference. So for me it's more of a waste of time than anything else, and I'm rather disappointed as I was expecting at least 5° less...

Another thing i wounder what the temp would be with the thermal paste replacement and that new Jsaux back cover with the heat sink :)

OMG I've been wondering what's wrong with my gulikit sticks I soldered them and everything but it never worked. Guess I'll be waiting for the revision...

So the magnetic thumb sticks don't work in the new decks? I was tempted to swap mine out. Got my deck this month.

Why not disconnect battery?

Thanks for the video ! Do you need to disconnect the battery when doing this ?

I just ordered the mx-6 thermal paste, do you guys think that I will expect the same different in degrees, while i have it apart i went ahead and ordered a 1tb rocket ssd. Hope all that goes well lol

Any update? Still lower temps?

I'm here because I bought a deck used as was impatient waiting for a restock. then 2 weeks later they went on sale 10% off lol. But my Deck keeps hitting 90 degrees c and then thermal throttling down to 400 mhz making my games run at 6 to 9 fps and googled it and found information saying it's a overheating issue that could be cause by when i changed out the SSD i might have let the fan cable go near electro magnetic sources or things along those lines. someone changed the paste but got no real change in temps just wquieter fans, So i came across your video. do you think this will stop my issue. as It65 is so annoying. just about to kill the griffin in the witcher then my FPS tanks and the whole system is unusable till it stops. happens in lots of games too. I haven't noticed it if I run a game on desktop mode yet which is odd. But I am sure I have just been lucky or maybe desktop mode doesn't add the extra processing power that the gaming mode adds and maybe that is why. But I bet it will do it in desktop mode as well If I give it long enough. I will watch the end of the video and then maybe buy some. Or wait for your reply see what you think. I don't really want to take it apart again just to see if something is not in it's correct place etxc. But I only changed the SSD. Maybe it's why it was sold in the first place. I just hope it is fixable. cheers. Oh btw I have some Arctic MX5 from when I built my PC is it worth trying with that stuff? yeah mine is 52 degrees 53 degrees idle in the steam os. I will take it apart tomorrow try the Arctic MX5 first unless you say you think that is a bad Idea. If you get back to me. Edit. 48 to 50 in idle now. I didn't wait. still loads more than yours. Oh you literally said No arctic MX5 lol. isn't it worth a try with my situation though?

Has anyone attempted to use thermal grizzly cryonaut?

-2-3c difference with stock paste in my case, idk maybe it depends on the game, tfx better than stock paste that's for sure

Worked on Laptops #1 step rule disconnect battery connector first

i have fixed steam deck thermal issues minor i sended steam deck my picture of the steam deck they asked if i want rma i said okay i bought the 64 gb steam deck but after rma i got a brand new 512 gb i think because of my own thermal mod maby they are looking at it but im happy with the change!!!

best temp drop i've had (minus using liquid metal) is from PTM7950. Max temps dropped from around 81 to around 73. The gulikit joysticks are trash anyway. Yeah they might be hall effect, which increases longevity, but as far as accuracy goes, they are garbage, which I think matters more than durability personally. A stick that needs replacing after 2 years, and is accurate, is far better than a stick that lasts 6 years but is inaccurate and overly sensitive.

dcs on steam deck???

Talking about the ihs the steam deck doesn't have a ihs that's the bare die like a gpu

Pretty much any decent thermal paste is better than the garbage they put in there at the factory

One should be disconnecting battery before working inside deck, and draining remaining power from system. I had to RMA mine when I failed to do so, after upgrading SSD. Be warned! :)

Liquid metal

The best thermal paste is grizzly far none I have replaced mine and if I have an external fan blowing in my steam deck will not get any hotter than 50 Celsius I’m telling you grizzly is the number one thermal paste out there other than Alienware thermal paste for their core processor but they do not sell that. That is the best thermal paste.

You forgot to unplugged the battery

85°c is completely normal for the steam deck these things are only supposed to last about a year or 2 until the next model comes out

Honeywell PTM7950 = better

My screen died. Do not repeat unless you want to risk your deck's life.