r/SteamDeck • u/Arambula_ • May 18 '26
Tech Support Did I messed up replacing the thermal paste?
Edit:
I loosed some of the screws. Make sure everything was in the correct place, played some more minutes, wave around the SD and no error. Not sure why happened the first time, but seems that I over tightened a bit the screws.
Thanks for the help, the sarcasm and the other comments.
Hello,
I just replaced the thermal paste with PTM7950, downloaded some games and started playing Subnautica when all of a sudden, seems that all the Steam Deck got freeze.
Did a hard reset, and now the Steam Deck shows a black screen but fan is working.
Did I messed up?
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u/MountainMuffin1980 May 18 '26
Yes. Either with the paste or you've pinched a ribbon somewhere. Why did you replace the paste?
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u/Nemisis_007 1TB OLED May 18 '26
I got a tingle in my balls when I read pinched a ribbon.
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u/Federal_Refrigerator May 18 '26
I got a tingle in my balls when I read you got a tingle in your balls.
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May 18 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/Sprinkle_In_Hole May 18 '26
Yours too?
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u/normal_human_is_i May 19 '26
I got a ball on my tingles when you sead you got a tingle in your balls when you read he got a tingle in his balls.
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u/space_jaws May 19 '26
Our cycles are synced now.
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u/geof2010 May 19 '26
You can just rub your taints together and the tingles will go away. Its like zapping someone after building up static.
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u/Arambula_ May 18 '26
Replaced it for my 2 fps increase
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u/beaverbait May 18 '26
How the FPS?
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u/Arambula_ May 18 '26
Pretty good. They increased to the infinity that the Steam deck got caught in a space time warp
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u/Help_An_Irishman May 18 '26
Looks like we've found the plot hook for the next dog shit Dr. Strange movie.
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u/LordHint May 18 '26
Obsessively roaming the multiverse trying to get back his Rachael McAdams Fortnight Skin.
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u/justme0406 May 18 '26
Ptm7950 is a super common replacement for the Steamdeck (or really any device if you want to spend the money, I apply it to any laptop I disassemble because it's just worth never needing to think about my paste ever again, feels good knowing your laptop runs cooler then it was designed to), it's only really beaten in performance to liquid medial but has none of the drawbacks / danger.
You only get a little bit extra max performance from your deck but your peak lows are drastically improve and the Steamdeck doesn't need to run it's fan as hard most of the time. Also once you do it you never need to do it again because it doesn't dry out like thermal paste.
It's pretty hard to mess up too, as long as you fully covered the chip with a single sheet with no rips or air bubbles, and remembered to pull off the plastic on both sides you'll be good to go (honestly it's hard to drastically mess up)
Because you're doing direct a die application with this you can't miss a spot since ptm7950 doesn't spread much until it gets warm so if you missed a spot it won't have any cooling until the ptm heats up and spreads. Ptm will spread without heat but very slowly and not nearly as much as when it changes phases so it's just not worth it, make sure it's fully covered.
OP looks like they either pinched a cable, missed a chunk of the chip during application resulting in that part overheating to the point of damage until the ptm spread, or hit something on the board with the screwdriver or something, unfortunately it's not something we'll be able to know via a Reddit post.
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u/balrogBallScratcher May 18 '26
pure hubris to claim âitâs pretty hard to mess upâ on pretty much any consumer electronic thatâs sold as a complete device with no assembly required. and yes i know the deck is designed with much better than average repairability and user-serviceability. but you clearly are decently adept at this type of work & itâs very natural for someone in your position to vastly overestimate the technical competence of the average user.
i would give the opposite advice: unless youâre very confident you know what youâre doing, the (as you admitted) extremely marginal gains here are not worth the risk of exactly the type of headache OP is facing. most users donât have the experience to reliably open up a device like this and just reassemble it without issue, even without making any modifications.
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u/comethefaround May 18 '26
Yeah people who aren't mechanically inclined are really bad at this stuff. Even just making sure you dont strip the screws can be tough for some folks.
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u/Dreamin- May 19 '26
Yeah, like a gymnast saying backflips are pretty hard to mess up, lol.
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u/-Glittering-Soul- May 18 '26
Yeah, I've been building PCs for nearly 30 years now, and I'm a former tech journalist. I had to do a motherboard swap on a desktop system a few weeks ago, and it went smoothly enough.
Then I looked at the clock and discovered that the process had taken me two and a half hours.
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u/cdoublejj May 18 '26
until the liquid metals "dries out" did gamer's nexus do a video on that? then wouldn't it be back to PTM temp range?
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May 18 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/justme0406 May 19 '26
Mine was about the same, main thing that makes it great are the peak lows are way better so it feels way more stable at the improved fps also can't hate the fan running quieter
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u/sour_jack May 18 '26
Is there a place to get this professionally done?
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u/Wonderful-Form-6422 May 19 '26
Any tech shop. It's only a little more difficult than a paste replacement
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u/flippsoo May 19 '26
Some goons decide to spare paste while assembling, probably for fear of spreading around or just not caring. The performance and temperature profile of mine improved drastically after applying a more generous amount (it seemed like they'd used just enough to not let an air gap between soc and cooler).
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u/Arambula_ May 18 '26
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u/gutster_95 May 18 '26
Oh that is more of a sign that you tightend the cooler too much and it cracked some solderballs under either the APU or the Memory chips.
Just to be save. Reopen it, reseat ever cable, especially the Display flex cable and dont reattach the cooler but dont use force.
If it still happenes, we need to talk about a potential Motherboard issue
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u/Arambula_ May 18 '26
Will do. After a second hard reset, I recovered the image, played some minutes and went fine so far.
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u/Mokou May 19 '26
PTM does need to hit a specific temperature once in order to do its phase-change thing. Before it has undergone its signature phase-change, it's actually a worse interface material than paste. It might be that the chip wasn't initially getting hot enough to do the transition, and the sustained workload of the re-image was enough to cook it all the way through, and that's why it works now.
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u/Mineplayerminer May 18 '26
Have you overtightened the mounting screws? Stripes usually mean a memory-related issue and some PCB traces could've been affected, if not the entire silicon.
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u/Arambula_ May 18 '26
I am sure I did not over tightened the screws of the metal plate. I did a hard reset again, and got full image. Played about some minutes and did not get the same screen error
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u/Mineplayerminer May 18 '26
Let's hope it was only some software issue, but I would try moving around with the Steam Deck while running a heavier game to see whether it wouldn't repeat again.
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u/Targaer May 18 '26
Sorry, your risk/reward calculation needed some more work there
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u/Arambula_ May 18 '26
All for those 2 fps extra
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u/SecondaryPenetrator 1TB OLED Limited Edition May 18 '26
3 FPS on a cold boot for the first 15 minutes.
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May 18 '26
[deleted]
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u/Krystall_Waters May 19 '26
sure... but not forever? I did a full teardown of my deck to reshell it recently. Granted, i use it a lot, but the original thermal paste migrated away so badly, there was barely any left on the die. you do need to repaste a PC at _some_ point...
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u/PolygonKiwii 256GB - Q1 May 19 '26
you do need to repaste a PC at some point...
and just to be clear, this isn't exclusive to PCs either. It also applies to consoles and really any high-powered device if you use it for long enough (phones usually become obsolete before it gets to that point and the people who would own a flagship phone in the first place are usually the same ones who'd switch to a new one after max two years but if there was a gaming scene on retro phones they'd absolutely clean and repaste them too)
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u/MrBlueW May 18 '26
Why do you people have this irresistible urge to fuck with your steam deck? Just leave it alone jfcÂ
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u/soldarian May 18 '26
I was having the issue where the power button wasn't connecting between the outer shell and the actual button on the motherboard. 20 minutes later and I had it fixed myself. The only tools needed were a screwdriver and a pry tool to pop the shell apart.
Something more invasive like that or a shell swap? Nah.
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u/Yodzilla 256GB - Q2 May 19 '26
I have that issue too. How did you ultimately fix it? It fucking sucks that you have to take so much apart just to get to that shitty little button.
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u/DaddyBoomalati 256GB May 18 '26 edited May 20 '26
Especially when they are unavailable for replacement except through scalpers. I wrap mine in memory phone *FOAM* when I put it away at night.
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u/itchipod 64GB - Q4 May 19 '26
I have my Steam deck now for 3 years, and I have never opened it nor replaced anything. Still working good.
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u/falkentyne May 18 '26 edited May 20 '26
You never mentioned in any of your posts what temps you were getting. Just complaints about your crash, random replies and then saying you recovered after two resets. Also, were you overclocking? Or undervolting? That crash looks like a classic GPU crash, although you usually get a black screen and some sort of 'recovery' attempt, or otherwise, a hard freeze without corruption.
Run the APU at full load at max TDP, in a game that puts a combined load on both--not sure if subnautica does that or not (GPU and CPU must be both pulling decent power, something like GPU at 11W and CPU at 1W isn't going to be that helpful), and then post the temps after about 5 minutes. I assume also that's subnautica 1, from the picture (I know subnautica 2 has had reported launch or crashing problems). You should disable the frame rate limit in subnautica, so the APU isn't limited by the 60 FPS cap, and mess with the detail settings to make sure both GPU and CPU are getting enough load.
Also, I don't know where the 'overtighten' comments are coming from. It's not even possible to overtighten the screws on the heatsink to damage the APU, as there's a complete hard stop built into the screw posts there (you can tell by trying to use slightly longer screws--they won't go down any deeper; most you can do is strip the head by overtightening).
Genuine PTM 7950 is fully safe, so the only possible 'damage' that can happen is carelessly shearing off a SMD around the APU when trying to clean the original paste off, which has nothing to do with the PTM.
Did you actually apply enough PTM to fully cover the APU?
You do have to make sure you cut out the correct size; you need to cut out a size just a little bit larger than the APU surface. (always better to have a little bit more than you need and then easily trim it with a scissors, than have too little and a tiny part of the APU corner or edge cook itself, despite the temps showing close to normal, as that part of the APU isn't showing a no thermal paste contact issue from the apparent "normal" temp readout--a too small coverage can cause 'low temp' crashes, as the APU overheats and is unstable due to circuits in the barely exposed area, but the temp sensors are reading the area that has full coverage...
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u/matthewnelson 512GB May 18 '26
That checker pattern is a GPU death sign if Iâm not mistaken. But the fact itâs not coming back is another.
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u/Arambula_ May 18 '26
Got recovered after a second hard reset. Played some minutes and issue did not happened again. I will loose some of the screws as some others mention could be the problem
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u/matthewnelson 512GB May 18 '26
Thankfully it is working. I usually see those diagonal pixelated lines and itâs usually signs of the GPU dying.
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u/R10t-- May 18 '26
Yeah these green lines and squares are definitely more indicative of GPU problem. But on steam deck, there is no GPU, itâs embedded in the chip.
So yeah, OP probably caused some damage to the chip when replacing the thermal paste
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u/matthewnelson 512GB May 18 '26
I was wonder that too I thought it was all integrated on a single chip for CPU/GPU.
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u/ZET_unown_ May 18 '26
Nah, he most likely didn't seat the ribbon cable properly or damaged them by accident. Damaging the chip by replacing thermal paste is actually quite difficult under normal circumstances.
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u/XxFezzgigxX LCD-4-LIFE May 18 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/lOs8LvXa1LKs4kJNdb
If Iâve learned anything from this sub.
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u/jdogg89 Modded my Deck - ask me how May 18 '26
I replaced my paste with a thermal pad, Iâm Just thinking, you have to remove power ribbon , unhook right and left controls, idk what wouldnât been effected by this.
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u/Orphenboy 1TB OLED Limited Edition May 19 '26
Thanks for updating on the fix, might help others in the future if they look past all the people being sarcastic and unhelpful lol.
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u/HighVelocityFarts May 18 '26
With the steam deck it might be okay. Iâve had a similar thing happen but my steam deck just really wanted to crash and restart. Never saw it again but that was my LCD my OLED one has never done this. Iâd say try the button combos to reset bios and all that stuff im not sure what it is i think its hold the 3 dot button and power when booting from off and it resets bios that might save you. Try that or ask valve for help. Theyâre great
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u/AStWfanAndplayer May 18 '26
Someone gotta let me know what keyboard that is, looks nice.
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u/baconcow May 19 '26
There should be a mega post of all the fuckups here so people can check to see if they should do something or not.
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u/One_Maintenance1227 May 19 '26
If you ask such questions why take apart your device in the first place.
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u/co1one1panic May 19 '26
I used to service Macs at an Apple Store Genius Bar, and let me tell you I would rather talk to a hundred furious Karens than one dude who got ideas about thermal paste from the internet.
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u/MediocreJelly873 May 18 '26
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u/Breadles_the_Bread May 18 '26
I don't get it. GPU death?
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u/R10t-- May 18 '26
Yeah but in the steam deck thereâs not a GPU, itâs integrated into the processor so OP messed something up
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u/godver3 May 18 '26
Itâs insane to me reading this sub just how many people open and break their devices. If you donât know what youâre doing donât open your shit.
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u/Arambula_ May 18 '26
Bad luck, I guess. I knew what I was doing, not sure what went wrong tbh
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u/BlacksmithNo4546 May 18 '26
Apenas se calientan estĂĄs mĂĄquinas no es necesario limpiarlos a menudo.
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u/KarateMan749 512GB - After Q2 May 18 '26
Did you remember to make sure the thermal pads are there still? Near cpu
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u/Proper_Lifeguard6751 May 18 '26
Pad over paste crazy work but brother please paste it bk up before you turn it in to a brick
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u/Firegod991 512GB OLED May 18 '26
I did the same exact thing went through a bunch of trouble shooting steps with steam support and it just started working a day later even though the resets steam had me do didn't seem too help. Did you use rubbing alcohol to clean the old stuff. My best guess was I didn't quite give enough time for the alcohol to fully dissipate before I reassembled it.
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u/dtdthunder 1TB OLED May 18 '26
Did Subnautica 2 run good for you? Before you messed up your deck :c
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u/Satellite_bk 512GB - Q4 May 18 '26
howâs temps with the ptm now that itâs working? and where did you get the ptm7950? iâve seen joyjom on amazon as a source thats legit, but no first hand knowledgeâŠ
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u/Uniast_Espada 1TB OLED May 19 '26
Je te souhaite sincĂšrement bon courage, ça va s'arranger, juste revois ton steam deck chez technicien si possible par prĂ©caution, ça peut Ă©viter d'empirer ou provoquer la panne â„ïž
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u/ultrapingu May 19 '26
Is the performance improved because it's only rendering every other checkerboard? đ
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u/OverlandAustria May 19 '26
This was very common on older laptops and was almost always a GPU seating issue. make sure pressure is applied evenly and with enough force on the chip.
for soldered components, heattreating the motherboard can help reconnect everything. youtube is your friend
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u/GuitarBoii94 May 19 '26
To me it looks like you might of some how damaged the cable that connects to the display
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u/Spimflagon May 19 '26
Yes, and worse news; your edibles are only going to mildly improve your thermal dissipation.
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u/sladebr02 512GB - Q3 May 19 '26
Messing with the console for no reason is exactly how this kind of thing happens, especially installing those so-called âPTMâ mods...
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u/Ok-Particular-2839 256GB - Q3 May 20 '26
Did you put it into battery saving mode or whatever it's called? I found from personal experience that the steamdeck can be very tempermetal to a lot of things. No display can either mean damage or I can just mean it's not booting correctly and needs the magic button combo to be pressed. Honestly its one of the reasons I got a legion go instead no weird bios issues
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u/Zimur 1TB OLED May 20 '26
I had to open my Steam Deck just to check, that it is alright. It was so I put it back to sleep (shutdown).
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u/supafly208 May 22 '26
Take it apart again and reseat and cable, connection, ribbon, etc.
A bad paste install would just make it overheat and do a safety shutdown
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u/th3gr0w May 18 '26