Push Your Steam Deck BEYOND its Limits With Undervolting And Overclocking! 

The face of our hero!

It's people like you who have and share legitimate knowledge that keep the tech world going. You're gonna go places!

You're going places as a creator in the tech space no matter if you stick to only Deck content or not. Clear, concise, honest, and no fluff. Exactly what this community needed.

Just to be VERY clear: If you cause harm to the Deck by following this guide and reach out to Valve to do an RMA, please be truthful about the cause and don't lie about it! Valve has been nothing but great to the community, and I wouldn't want to cause ill-will with them! UPDATE: Newer BIOS versions break Smokeless_UMAF, I'm working on a fix so stay tuned!

Lots of other tech channels show you how to tinker with settings but not why. I really appreciate the time you take to explain what's going on with the settings that are changed. Keep up the amazing work!!

You are one of the very positive examples of why the linux community can shine: You make the steam deck even better for everyone by sharing your knowledge and helping lots of people for free. You are awesome, thank you.

The work you put in is unparalleled, your channel is a goldmine my friend. Thanks for everything you're doing for the community!!

I've had my Deck undervolted with raised clockspeed limits for a few months now. The biggest improvement for me that didn't involve increasing the TDP(which would reduce battery life and increase temperatures) was undervolting the GPU. My GPU now manages to hit over 1600mhz in some spots on the RDR2 benchmark where it would typically be below 1500mhz before. The results of this are that the Average FPS is slightly higher but more noticeably, the 1% lows are quite a bit better and I don't have stutter nearly as much in places where I assume the GPU was throttling against the TDP limits before.

Dude, this is the most well-presented guide I've ever seen on youtube. This video is a masterclass on how to construct a youtube tutorial, and people should pay you for the lesson.

Your channel is the bar I measure others by when it comes to stuff like this. That you go through and do practically *ALL* the testing, consider most possibilities, share results, it's just excellent. And a lot of work, that I very much appreciate

Finally done with my tests - T'was a long day! *Edit*: Did some more tests, updated the findings! Steam Desk tested: 256GB Q4 2022 Max UV: 55/55/55 - At GPU UV of minus 60mV, I started seeing some crashes and artifacts during my tests (listed down below). I was also experiencing artifacts in tests that I can't specify yet, but I will add them to the comment afterwards. 55mV was stable across the board so I'm sticking with that. TDP: 18W - This wasn't a question of "can I go higher", but a question of "*do* I want to go higher". The OC I chose should explain why I stick to 18W. I had it set on 19W before, but testing with Powertools showed that the clocks handle it in 18W or even 17W just fine. OC: 3850/1950 (+350/+350) - I emulate a lot, and I wanted to see how far I can push the CPU without reaching AVG temp of 85c or higher. CPU was way too hot for me, even after cooling the CPU quite a bit. GPU handled a bit more OC after the extra UV I put the GPU through. All of my tests were similar: 5-minute run on BOTW on CEMU for CPU load, 1 run of RE4 Remake mercenaries in the Village stage for GPU load. In those *new* tests, BOTW went to around on max temps of 84c on CPU and 84c on GPU, with averages of around 79-81c on both. RE4 Remake went a bit lower with 83c max on CPU and 84c max on GPU, but with averages of 80c on both. Battery life was almost the same, with RE4 remake giving me 1:35 hours of battery life on the performance settings, and BOTW still giving me around 1:27 hours. RE4 Remake with the combination of bigger UV and more GPU speed was able to run at a close 60FPS on performance settings which is quite frankly ridiculous, I wasn't expecting that big of a boost, but what do you know. In BOTW case the I am now able to pin the refresh rate on 45FPS and get a mostly consistent experience, I will not push it further than that, as I believe a bigger CPU UV would start to affect emulation as well. The CPU boost is a godsend for Switch and other high-end emulators that are heavily dependent on CPU. Luminescent Platinum, the big Brilliant Diamond mod stays almost exclusively in the 55+ FPS mark, and PLA is keeping 30FPS more consistently, though the issue is definitly a shader compilation thing. I trust the awesome guys at YUZU + Ryujinx to figure this out. I still need to check the temp reading issue, but other than that - it was a great success. Again, fantastic video Kyle. You're giving this community the teachings it needs to grow and be better. Don't underestimate what you're doing here. From one Zelda fan to another - glad I can contribute to you buying the new game :)

The Man, The Myth, the Legend. Thank you for all your tireless work on the Steam Deck.

We all won the lottery with the existence of this channel. Thank you, King K.

Not all hero’s wear capes! Your videos get better and better and you do such a great job explaining for people that don’t understand what’s going on. Thank you again for your hours and providing us with everything!

I just stuck with an UV of 20/20/20 as that's what seemed to work best and I usually use my deck plugged in, so I'm not too worried about battery life. Was able to get the OC of 4000/2000 and a TDP of 23 watts working so I'm pretty darn happy with the results. Thanks for the great video man. I've been keeping up with your releases and I appreciate the work you've put in to help all of us!

This is one of the best channels I've ever seen with regard to explaining the how and why behind tech tweaks. Great work!

I was waiting for this video since literally couple of days. You put so much effort for Deck community that you can't even imagine!

Your videos are well laid , organized and informative. i've been wanting to OC and undervolt my deck and this is a comprhensive tutorial.

Appreciate what you do for the community!

Thanks so much!! Very clear, easy to follow instructions. At no stage was I confused as to what the next step was. Also great explanation of the rationale for doing this. I got a -20, -20, -20 and am very happy with the results. Didn't overclock or mess with the TDP. Maybe for another time! You're amazing!

My god, this video is everything I wanted to know about both Undervolting and Overclocking and then some! You've explained it all perfectly and I will definitely be trying it on my Deck, but that might take a while since I'm quite busy at the moment. Also, can't wait to learn about the sentient rocks lmao

Your videos about over and underclocking have been incredibly helpful. Your clear and concise explanations have helped me to better understand how these concepts relate to gaming performance. Your expertise in this area is evident, and I am grateful for the knowledge you have shared. You're a real gem in the gaming community, and I appreciate the time and effort you put into creating such informative content. Keep up the great work!

This guide has been tremendously helpful! I’ve been trying to push more performance out of it but had no idea how I could do it. This guide was easy to learn, and very informative on what the options actually do. I was terrified to brick my deck, but so far so good! Thanks for the work you do on Deck. It’s really such a great value system and is a fun way to learn.

Definitely not going down this path with my Deck, but I appreciate the video on how-to and some results. Thanks for doing the work.

Wow. The level of guidance is next level. Very enjoyable watch and your voice is enjoyable and easy to understand. Look forward to future vids.

This man has been teaching a master course in Linux with the steam deck. Most people just tell you what to do and you follow along. After these videos I walk away with actual new knowledge and understanding of what I just did, which then helps me out with random things here and there going forward. You deserve so much more man. Keep it up.

This is a really well-made video. The content is succinct and well-organized, and you are a great presenter. Fantastic tutorial!

Wow dude! Excellent writing, filming, editing, and fantastic technical knowledge. Very organized too. You're awesome man. Im going to try this on my deck soon.

Happy Good Friday, Kyle God bless you and the family with an amazing Easter 🐣 weekend! Keep up the great work for our fantastic steam deck community, I will share the video on Facebook and LinkedIn as usual 🦉 I got in a good leg workout last night, and I trained back the night before, the soreness is just right and I had an amazing protein smoothie when I got to work. I’ve been spending a lot of the day thinking about how blessed I am and being present. 206 days no alcohol 🏆🥇 Thank God for Andrew Huberman!

The only guy I would trust when it comes to overclocking the steam deck. Thanks a lot for all the efforts. We really do love your channel ❤️👌

Thank you so much, this video is incredibly easy to follow along, you give clear stats and instructions, you explain everything well, and i feel like i got it all quite easily and im a first time overclocker. I was able to increase the tdp allowance to 20 watts, got an undervolt of -65/-65/-55, an overclock of the cpu at 4100 gpu at 1900, on a Q4 64gb with a 256gb drive, I couldnt be happier with the results ive gotten, they are far better than anything i could have expected, i keep most games between 12-18watts now that i have that allowance to go above 15, and ive have had a much more stable experience with them, 20watts is only for the games that REALLY need it, and my battery life is still pretty good, alot better in some cases, i got some amazing undervolts, it was all far far easier than i ever could have expected, just go in small increments, and keep testing as you go along, see an issue and go back. The steam deck really allows you to tinker with it and i love that, thank you again for all your tutorials and optimization guides, i cant wait for the advanced overclocking video whenever that comes, your gonna blow it out of the park

Nice to see you on Video :) Cheers m8 and thanks for all you have done for the community!

Oh wow, you're at 40k subs almost. Keep it going, that's super impressive. Best of luck with further growing the best Steam Deck oriented channel.

You provide such an immense amount of value to this community. One of my favorite things is that you don’t blindly give advice, but educate us on our choices so that we can understand the changes we’re making and decide which ones are best for our individual situations. You make potentially daunting subjects easily digestible. Bravo yet again my friend. 👏🏻

I actually did this before this video but I love that you did a video on this. I got -35 -35 -40 for the undervolt. I didn't increase the TDP but I set Max CPU clock to 3700. In games that are single threaded (some emulated stuff), the CPU does reach 3.7 GHz but not in games that require more power and are more multi-threaded. I don't really need any more CPU power at the moment so I am leaving things for now.

just to help the YT Algo out on your video: It is absolutely great and your slow way of working this through, can help a lot of people to do the same thing, without being a nerd in any way. Great Job!

Dude! Kyle.... Thank you so much for this information and tutorial video! I as well as the rest of us Steam Deck community, greatly appreciate everything that you do for us Steam Deck users. Thanks again!

Been waiting for this. Excited to try it. Keep up the amazing work!

Great video as always. Was waiting for a youtube review from a reliable source on the process of setting up overclocking as well as doing some benchmarking to see if its worth it. Will definitely give it a shot, thanks!

I've never waited more anxiously for a video than this one

This is awesome. I've been undervolting / overclocking my regular PCs' GPUs and CPUs for years. I knew the Steam Deck existed but never looked much into it. My coworker brought his in and I was impressed. Started Youtubing it and see it's such an impressive piece of hardware. Just bought the 64GB version and once it arrives, I'm buying the 1TB Sabrient Rocket SSD made for it. I'm into classic console emulation so I'll load that in too ... and going to attempt to undervolt/overclock per this video.

I’d love to hear about HT/memory overclocking, which I’ve found can be more valuable than a pure CPU clock multiplier boost. Great work, as always!

I personally think this is the best tech tutorial ever, SD related or not. It's so well organized I didn't skip a second in this video. Keep it up bud!

Wow, this is so informative. Even though I'm not going to OC my Deck, because it's good enough for me, I'm really grateful for explaining these OC procedures.

It's good to be back! As always thank you for the great content❤❤

Cryobyte33 I love your videos because of how well made they are and how they explain every single process, why it should be done and how it improves overall performance

Fantastic video! Thanks for all the steam deck tweaks!

This is awesome! I love getting the most out of my laptop and desktop gpu's with undervolting. It's such an under represented topic on tech channels. I honestly didn't expect the deck would be this tweakable. I'll definitely be giving this a go. Thank you for all your hard work. Also, it's great to see you! I get stressed about stuff like that, I only ever post my art on social media and RU-vid, I don't like showing my face or even talking for that matter. But there's no denying it engages the audience more when they can put a face to the voice they've been listening to. I'm always looking forward to whatever deck topic you come up with next and it's great to see how your channel is growing. Keep it up 🤟

This is absolutely fantastic!!! I was able to get a -40-40-40 with this video. Thank you.

Keep it up mate! You’re the best !❤

I cannot believe you answered, every single one of my questions as the video progressed. You truly are a legend.

High Quality content. 💪 One of the best instructions I've ever seen on yt. And I saw a lot. Gj sir👍 and your chill voice is a pleasure to hear

Awesome work, thank you so much for Cryoutilities 👍

My man! Thanks for your time and work! Glorious hairs by the way!

Thank you so much for your undervolting guide! My Steamdeck has stayed strong and stable with a 45, 50, 45 undervolt.

you've help me out so much! I am new to linux/steam but have enjoyed your videos and following along getting the most out of my deck,

Happy Easter brother! Hope you have a great weekend and keep up the great work. Thanks for all the great content

Cant wait to see this, i already undervolted mine. it is very quiet with liquid metal + thermal puddy and so on. its very silent and much better then stock. you can also test if the undervolt is stable when reducing the clock speed in power tools. i had a crash with -60MHz and Speed lowered to 800MHz. on higher clocks i had no problems. i went with -40MHz on all 3 When we undervolt and stay at the 15W stock TDP, we are already overclocking a bit because the SD can push it already longer at high clocks with the more efficient Undervolt.

Great video. Thankyou for pointing out the difference between these tweaks and CryoUtilities. These tweaks are a bit much for me but I appreciate the time you put into these videos for the community!

Since I spent a lot of time with this video today I just wanted to say I really love your videos. They're always very comprehensive and I learn a bit about computers despite being a nerd.

This video is sick. Fans are a bit loud for my taste running Hogwarts Legacy through my 1080p monitor during testing, but I figure that's probably a worst-case scenario. I'm also not used to the old Steam Deck fan curves. I may roll it back a bit or see if I can get away with some fan curve tweaks. Ended up with a 30-30-30 underclock, 22w TDP, and 4000/2000 overclock. My deck is brand new. Based on the small sample size of your decks and mine, it looks like the newer Decks may be better overclockers. I'm lazy and impatient, so I didn't do the proper "reach instability then roll back" OC method. Once I was within spitting distance of your newer deck and stable, I called it and didn't push any further. Thanks for the guide, can only imagine the amount of effort it takes to trial and error all this stuff!

Thank you so much for this Cryo, much appreciated!!

Commenting before I watch, Cyro you are such a legend in this community! Thank you so much for all your help

So i have just discovered your videos the other day and decided to give this a try. I downloaded and used your recommended settings for CryoUtilities 2.1 then I started messing with undervolting and overclocking. I have had good results so far and have been careful. So far I have pushed it to -30 across the board. TDP of 21W, 4000 CPU and 2000 GPU. I feel like that is good enough. I don't want to risk bricking my Deck. I may scale back to -20 on all three and 20W later. I want to thank you for your hard work and sharing it with all of us. I look forward to seeing any future videos covering this topic and if you find any other useful information regarding overclocking etc.

Well done! The only information that I miss in this material is how the temperatures changed when using individual settings. It would be great to see the averaged values ​​along with the rest of the information. THANK YOU FOR THE GREAT WORK YOU HAVE DONE Greetings from Poland

Anxiety waiting for this video, amazing like always. THANK YOU!

my favourite deck RU-vid strikes again, great video man thank you so much for this!

Oh dude your cryo!!!!!! I just realized great to see you in person lol thanks for all you do

Is there a new guide for this? Because this no longer works

I achieved -40 -40 -40. I tested to -50 -50 -50 but was worried that I might be pushing it. I chose extra stability, which was more important than a little extra undervolt. I also tried 3.8ghz on the CPU and 1800mhz on the GPU at 20W TDP. I ended up reverting and keeping the undervolt to preserve battery life. For reference, I have a Q4 2022 64gb Steam Deck with a 512gb upgraded SSD.

Started with how to recover from bad settings with CMOS reset, used Goku in the thumbnail. Amazing work as always. You are a pilar of the steam deck power user community and we don't deserve you. Thanks for everything!

Wow. This is the type of content I am very interested in. Keep this up!

-40/-40/-40 UV (no OC: prefer battery life, better temps & quieter fan) -45/-45/-45 worked too but also preferred it to be rock stable. 64gb deck bought during sale and upgraded to 512gb nvme and running win11 great video!

AHHH, the video I was waiting for! Glad I could help you get that Deck. You are the real legend helping all of us Deckers get much more out of the Steam Deck.

This is just what I was looking for! Can't wait to try!

commenting for the algorithm because you make fantastic content. much appreciated homie

Managed to get a stable -40 -40 -40 undervolt; The golden 40 prevails once more! Great video as always

Awesome Video & explanation as well. I got to -40/-40/-40 on all 3, and didn't want to push beyond that. I figured that'll be good enough for now. I didn't attempt the TDP increase, as I was worried I'd get into a state where it may need to be RMA'd, and I don't want to be without my Steam Deck! (edited) - My Deck is July 2022, and 256GB.

Amazing video and thank you for sharing your hard work with the community!

I’ve tried. Worked flawlessly. Thanks!

We def need an update for this because certain things don’t’ show up anymore after the update

you're an absolute legend in the steam deck community dude!! keep it up

@cryobite hey I got my deck a few weeks ago and am starting to find your videos. Thanks so much, I’m learning a tonne and enjoying the improvements they bring as well. Looking fwd to the future ❤

Doing for the deck like Rocky5 did for the OGXbox. We appreciate your hardwork and awesome advice. You rock, homie!

I want to thank you for your work and the 1s who helped with the new deck, this community is awesome

Thank you, mate! Very informative, detailed video. I am always waiting for your content as much as my favorite shows! Seriously! I hope that you are able to continue doing the things you do, as our community needs you so very much! Cheers!! ❤

Nice to see your face man. Thank you for all your work for the community

You are going places. I watch tons of videos like this and your videos blow multi-million dollar channels out of the water. Thank you for your help!

Hey, Isaac from Pixel Deck here....always enjoy your videos. This goes WAY beyond what we would ever handle, but I personally appreciate these vids as a longtime fellow PC nerd.

I'm not currently a Steam Deck owner, but I appreciate deeply your passion to it and been watching your channel for a while now. Good job man, I hope to be able to be a part of the steam deck community soon!

Like Spolt I also achieved -40 -40 -40. I also tested -50-50-50 but I was worried that I would pushing my luck. I also tried 3.8ghz on the CPU and 1800mhz on the GPU at 21W TDP but I wasn't happy with the results. Ended up reverting to just the undervolt to preserve battery life and help sustain those OG higher clocks for longer. I have a Q4 2022 512gb Steam Deck and I guess I won the Silicon Lottery. Cheers for your hard work, in depth tutorials and analysis. Keep up the good work!

Again, you've outdone yourself, you have my only 2 youtube comments in the past year because frankly, I couldn't care less about commenting on most videos. I have to say, it's great to see the information presented in such a way that people unfamiliar can follow along, but people with more background like myself can just get a concise list of tools and tweaks to get going. Hopefully this gets to as many people as possible, hopefully even prompting valve to add more direct support for tweaks like this directly into the deck BIOS.

I'm not one much for watching live streams, but I wish you the best of luck in that. You need more viewers and I really appreciate your work. When I get home tonight I'm going to try this out, I remember looking into this much earlier and seeing you had to short some things to get undervolts to work so I'm glad that isn't required anymore.

I love geeking out over this type of stuff. It amazes me how we can push the limits of the Deck. I just wish there was a Linux app we could run in desktop mode to see how far we can push under clock before tinkering and testing.

This is an OUTSTANDING video! Props to you sir! Subbed!

Thanks Chewbacca! This was very helpful and I think I may get another steam deck to try it

I probably won’t do this for a little while - my deck is due to arrive today and I want to have the stock experience for a little while - but I just wanted to pop in and say thank you for everything you’re doing. I’m definitely going to run CU on my stock deck! My only misgiving is that the graphs you show are sometimes not on the screen for long enough to actually read them without pausing the video. This is a VERY minor gripe and might not be to everyone’s tastes, but wanted to put it out there as a consideration for future videos, or maybe you could upload the graphs somewhere for us to go and scroll through at our leisure? In any case, you are doing excellent work and while you don’t need some random guy on the internet to tell you, I wanted to say thank you again. It’s thanks to people like you that the community I’ve encountered seems so overwhelmingly positive about the future of the deck!

thank you 😊 my highest (lowest?) stable voltage offsets were -30, -40, -40, and I increased my max TDP too. I think I'll refrain from overclocking, and I'm going to keep using the generous TDP limits I usually do (like factorio runs almost just as well at 5W compared to 15W or 20W) to get more battery life most of the time. but if I'm already plugged in, it's nice to be able to whip open power tools and crank it :D

This is great I was able to use your overclock State you did on your steam deck number two everything is running nicely

If you were changing the clock speeds at 100 each time, this must have taken bloody ages!! I always appreciate your videos Cryo. Thanks for your hard work.