Valve is selling steam decks with defective motherboards

vstar950 · Mar 26, 2026

My first steam deck was an LCD model that had a bad motherboard right out of the box. I contacted valve and they fought me tooth and nail so I would not send it in to them for a full refund. I ended up returning it and getting a full refund while waiting for the OLED model to come out. My OLED model is just out of its warranty but the motherboard went bad and it is not a warranty issue but a recall problem. I am not the only one having this happen to their decks. Steam Decks are having this happen out of nowhere. I have taken perfect care of this and never dropped or bumped. This is not from carelessness or neglect. This is a manufacture part issue. It has always been on the OEM charger. Still looks like brand new. Do not buy their knowingly defective products. They do know about this and yet do not fix it. I never played it with high temps and always had a fan blowing on it in an air conditioned room. once they get your money they don't care. Even with the LCD they tried to dismiss the brand new products issue. Buy another brand. I hope this does not happen to you.

You have been warned!

Once I edit out my personal information I will upload the conversation

AndorfRequissa · Mar 26, 2026

i cant speak for valve but in the last decade working in statistical process control of manufacturing i saw so many companies work so hard to get to minimum spec in their builds. as things get smaller they get flimsier and flimsier because the grade of materials isnt always up to snuff and when running everything at minimum spec things are designed to fail not to last.

alot of manufacturers do studies to make sure something works just long enough for the warranty to expire. some have spent so much time getting the science down with oxidization and other issues that they end up using less protectants so the product naturaly fails based just on oxygen flow.

blowing extra air in it in air conditioning could have been the source of your problem. the humidity of the condesated air could have speed up oxidation of some of the solder points on the mb.

vstar950 · Mar 26, 2026

AndorfRequissa said:
i cant speak for valve but in the last decade working in statistical process control of manufacturing i saw so many companies work so hard to get to minimum spec in their builds. as things get smaller they get flimsier and flimsier because the grade of materials isnt always up to snuff and when running everything at minimum spec things are designed to fail not to last.

alot of manufacturers do studies to make sure something works just long enough for the warranty to expire. some have spent so much time getting the science down with oxidization and other issues that they end up using less protectants so the product naturaly fails based just on oxygen flow.

blowing extra air in it in air conditioning could have been the source of your problem. the humidity of the condesated air could have speed up oxidation of some of the solder points on the mb.

I live in a dry climate. I wish there was moisture. if that was the case than my other computers would also be dead. Including computers in server rooms.

I am thinking of buying a Lenovo p14s. What are your opinions on quality?

AndorfRequissa · Mar 26, 2026

vstar950 said:
I live in a dry climate. I wish there was moisture. if that was the case than my other computers would also be dead. Including computers in server rooms.

I am thinking of buying a Lenovo p14s. What are your opinions on quality?

Lenovo is generally a better manufactured product because of IBM's stringent manufacturing process that they learned and adapted to when the acquisition of IBM pc's went to Lenovo.

personally im an asus fan and like their ROG series because they are built generally knowing that gamers are going to run them hard but i wont shit on Lenovo. i know quite a few people that are happy with them.

customer service is what matters and lenovo and asus both have pretty decent customer service.

sarkwalvein · Mar 26, 2026

To be honest, I had brought my release day Steam Deck all around the world, humid and extremely dry, cold and hot. Charged it with many different chargers, from cheap generic chargers to 100W USB-C chargers (I rarely use the OEM charger tbh)... and it always worked fine, still now. I don't think dry weather would really kill it. Yours is clearly defective, and the defect rate may be high (I don't have a clue), in that case I clearly lucked out.

What I wanted to say anyway is that (if you get one that is not defective) it should work fine in dry weather, dusty, or humid, hot or cold, with any type of charger.

vstar950 · Mar 27, 2026

sarkwalvein said:
To be honest, I had brought my release day Steam Deck all around the world, humid and extremely dry, cold and hot. Charged it with many different chargers, from cheap generic chargers to 100W USB-C chargers (I rarely use the OEM charger tbh)... and it always worked fine, still now. I don't think dry weather would really kill it. Yours is clearly defective, and the defect rate may be high (I don't have a clue), in that case I clearly lucked out.

What I wanted to say anyway is that (if you get one that is not defective) it should work fine in dry weather, dusty, or humid, hot or cold, with any type of charger.

I will never ever buy anything from them again. I gave them a second chance after the first DOA LCD.
They have burned me and others.
Never Valve! Never Again!
I am glad yours is working well.

Xzi · Mar 27, 2026

Never had an issue with my LCD model, or my OLED model since I sold the LCD and upgraded. Either just bad luck with the silicon lottery or the shipping carrier beat the hell out of your Decks on the way to you.

Older Lenovo laptops were certainly built to last, I got the last model with a hot swappable battery for just over a hundred bucks and put Linux Mint on it. Can't speak to the quality of the newer ones, but I haven't heard any horror stories about them either, unlike many other brands.

Bladexdsl · Mar 27, 2026

you can always get a B.Duck

vstar950 · Mar 27, 2026

Xzi said:
Never had an issue with my LCD model, or my OLED model since I sold the LCD and upgraded. Either just bad luck with the silicon lottery or the shipping carrier beat the hell out of your Decks on the way to you.

Older Lenovo laptops were certainly built to last, I got the last model with a hot swappable battery for just over a hundred bucks and put Linux Mint on it. Can't speak to the quality of the newer ones, but I haven't heard any horror stories about them either, unlike many other brands.

Going to have to save a few bucks as I have some very heavy expenses currently and coming up. Hopefully by June next year I can get a new P14s with 64gigs of ram

namename11 · Mar 27, 2026

Just buy another one. It's not like you are not saving tenths of dollars buying games on Steam instead of console. Valve needs all the money it can get to make gaming great again.

vstar950 · Mar 27, 2026

namename11 said:
Just buy another one. It's not like you are not saving tenths of dollars buying games on Steam instead of console. Valve needs all the money it can get to make gaming great again. Good idea.

Good idea! Support a company that does not back their product or their customers. You are not very bright are you?

namename11 · Mar 27, 2026

vstar950 said:
You are not very bright are you?

You're definitely not since you don't understand the concept of sarcasm.

Kioku · Mar 27, 2026

Fun fact: The company I work for is a Lenovo company, and their points of failure are hilariously bad. TB4 docks that for whatever reason don't work right with cheaper displays (black screens, fuzzing, etc.). Bad RAM modules (a whole pallet of laptops had bad RAM), and just questionable quality. I'll give them their customer support for a business environment is great. That said, I also love my Legion Go 2, just not with Windows.

Edit: Awaiting your edit with the conversation as I'm guessing that's the entire context of your complaint.

Taleweaver · Mar 29, 2026

Sucks. I've bought two LCD ones (a brand new one in that launch period, and one refurbished one), and know of a third refurbished one without issues. Neither prove nor disprove anything the OP experienced.

I must say I've not heard about it until now, but granted: two from the same user is either a terrible fluke, or a bad batch somehow. Sorry to hear about it.

Not sure how Lenovo laptops got mixed into this conversation, but my 2 cents on that: both current employer as the one-before-last job I had exclusively bought lenovos. On estimate, I've given around 200-350 of those things to employees in the last decade or so. The production error I've seen on those is in the single digits(1) (and I suspect at least two of those were MS intune's fault rather than production). Especially compared to HP (that'd be my last job), those are numbers almost too good to be true.
(edit: heh...just swapped out my personal refurbished thinkpad for my thinkbook work laptop. I don't mean to come off objective, but it's almost literally rubbing in my personal preference for lenovo

).

(1): of course, there's the grey area. But if, to give a recent example, a same laptop can survive little over a year with person A and has the back of the case "fall off from regular use" after three months with person B, I don't presume production error.

namename11 said:
You're definitely not since you don't understand the concept of sarcasm.

It's the internet. Without smiley's, your tone can be interpreted either way. As someone who's proficient in all forms of humor, I can say your attempt could've been better (I wouldn't have caught it either).

Valve is selling steam decks with defective motherboards

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There's hope for a Xenosaga port.

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BUSTAH WOLF!!!

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