The case of the broken SteamDeck

My SteamDeck notice and shortly after my SteamDeck came around the easter days. It's a nice device and I pushed many hours playing games in on it.

The first game I played was of course Aperture Desk Job.

Half-Confidently I tried Doom (2016). And died on "Hurt Me Plenty" in the waking up room in the beginning. Having beaten the game on Nightmare on a PC with the usual keyboard mouse combination, this seemed like a new challenge. The input with the Deck is new and different to me. I can't get the feeling for using the right analog stick for aiming, but the touchpad in combination with the gyro is feeling good. Not unlike using a trackball. With a bit of tweaking of the controls and mapping the buttons, especially the back buttons, in a comfortable way, learning the new input scheme, learning again how to play, step by step the demons go down and I further into the levels. 

This new way of playing reminds me of seeing other people, non-gaming people, playing games for the first time. It's an interesting experience.

Many hours I also spent inside Risk of Rain 2. Getting into this game with the Deck controls were much easier. But despite it being a Verified title for the SteamDeck, it runs badly with normal settings. Especially in later levels with more enemies. Turning nearly all settings down, even reducing the resolution, helps to get a fluid experience, even in Co-Op with friends.

The quick sleep-and-resume mode on the SteamDeck makes playing solo a much better experience then playing on PC. You pause, put the device to sleep, do something else, come back, turn the device back on and can directly continue your progress. RoR2 has longer loading times when starting the game. This way, you don't experience it. Even quickly joining a co-op game with friends is just picking the SteamDeck up and joining them.

In contrast to this is SplitGate. Putting the Deck to sleep while having this game running, you'll lose the connection to the multiplayer servers. And for now, that connection doesn't come back up and I have to restart the game to be able to play again. As the matches are short, especially here it would be a big benefit to quick-resume the Deck and quickly play a match in between some other activities. Getting the controls feeling okayish took me a while. You have to choose either keyboard-mouse or gamepad. You can't mix them, like in Doom or RoR2. And mixing them is kind of what I want, as analog movement feels better with slower steps and more accurate angles being possible that way. And the mouse for aiming with its higher precision then a gamepad joystick with its deadzones. Here in SplitGate, the gamepad users also get an advantage called aim-assist, which is kind of strong here. And with the deck, you, or at least I, like that kind of help as I am not yet good enough to aim completely for myself. Luckily, the deadzones can be set in this game. So having it in gamepad mode works good (and also gives nicer buttons with double-use, which for a keyboard would be either extra keys, or need a custom binding).

As a side note: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a different beast, which needs more accuracy, and therefore more time to get into. Maybe I'll try again after finishing a few other games.

While playing and trying those and a few other games, I experienced problems. The first one was the power button not easily responding. It became harder and harder to push the button to turn it on or off. I saw a few posts about this problem and at some point decided to open up my SteamDeck and investigate it myself. The button didn't hit the button on the mainboard hard enough. Wiggling the mainboard a little, pushing it up, showed, that it was just a tiny little sub-millimeter problem. My solution was then to fold a little piece of adhesive tape. A few millimeters wide to cover the size of the buttons, and a few layers thick to cover the missing height. Pushing it in between the button construction solved the problem and powering the device off and on again was again smoothly as in the beginning.

The second problem was the sound, which went missing. At some point in time, it just disappeared. And with it the audio device in the audio settings. Investigating this issue, multiple people seem to be affected by this, steam deck discussion, reddit discussion. Installing Windows brought the audio back, but just on the loudspeakers. The headphone jack stayed dead. After a bit back and forth with the support, the SteamDeck got RMA'd, as it wasn't a software failure and couldn't be solved as some form of updated.

Copy Paste of my posts for later reference:

Getting the same problem. Restarted multiple times. Switch to Desktop, Switch to Beta and Preview and back to Stable - nothing changed nor helped.

(Still need to check journalctl, systemctl, dmesg and such things...)

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dmesg: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e1kmNdkvCw5A6LVkXZMhAQ-JYgy2olI6/view
journalctl: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hvqIm4o6cI0MOs05cTIsyK48Yuo8AZQJ/view
lspci: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cIHgbS_6BWWjjyjvWpUc_I6LLDPHcMl1/view

pipewire, wireplumber, pipewire-pulseaudio seem to be running.
pipewire says something about: "no node available"
snd_hda_intel should be driver for audio device, according to lscpi and lsmod:

04:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device 1640
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel 

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looking at a working machine, there is the following from lsmod:

snd_soc_acp5x_mach → 4 vs. 0
snd_acp5x_pcm_dma → 1 vs. 0
snd_acp5x_i2c → 2 vs. 0
snd_soc_nau8821 → 2 vs. 0
snd_pci_acp5x → 0 vs. 0



Which hints at the log at:

Jul 20 17:04:22 steamdeck kernel: nau8821 i2c-NVTN2020:00: Failed to read device id (-121)

Jul 20 17:04:22 steamdeck kernel: nau8821: probe of i2c-NVTN2020:00 failed with error -121



nau8821 seems to be "Nuvoton codec NAU88L21" - "The driver is for codec NAU88L21 of Nuvoton Technology Corporation. The NAU88L21 is an ultra-low power high performance audio codec that supportsboth analog and digital audio functions."

acp5x seems to have to do something with "AMD Audio Coprocessor"



Hopefully this is just a driver issue, and is already fixed in upstream kernel, or Valve can have a look and fix it… 

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Quick follow-up:
I'm in contact with Steam Support.

→ Please try to adjust the volume by navigating through Steam > Settings > Audio.
That is empty. And not working.

→ Disconnect all external devices/connectors from the device and make sure you can still produce the issue.
Nothing connected, same problem.

→ If so, please try putting the unit into shipping mode.
Still same problem.

→ If this doesn't resolve the issue and you can locate a USB-C adapter, you may need to re-image the device.
Neither in the re-image-mode, nor after re-imageing, back in SteamOS the sounds is still not working and the audio device still gone.


Then I installed Windows 11. Without the drivers, there is also no audio device and no sound.
But with the drivers https://help.steampowered.com/de/faqs/view/6121-ECCD-D643-BAA8
, there, the audio device is there and sounds works in Windows!

There is a power failure warning at the NAU88L21 Codec Device, but the audio is still there and playing nicely through the speakers.

Sound properties: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c1T-FhTAUTWk1A8AA13l_w2zBCIJ-JJR/view?usp=sharing
System & HW info: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uICOZjn22WLC9iDSt_4qtIzCf-2mffFW/view?usp=sharing
NAU88L21 warning: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XnmFylcpNtCD_cl9Gyo5doQBNKyNWHtR/view?usp=sharing
NAU88L21 events log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lSdcmEUpCAZLXZTOPzpL8dtoTisUX-Nc/view?usp=sharing

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Final follow-up:
Audio-jack doesn't work with headphone nor headset on Windows. Internal microphone is also not available. Therefore it's assumed to be a hardware failure, and replacement is initiated.

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And on a side note: my girlfriends SteamDecks joystick has a big sticky point, meaning, that the stick sticks stiff near the center, which results, of course, in drift. You need to poke it a little to get it released to go back to center position. This might loosen up when it is used more, as this one is still nearly brand new, untouched 😅 We need more nice co-op games 😅.