Hello everyone and welcome to the channel. Today we're gonna go over how to
undervolt and overclock your steam deck to make it the best it can be. Stay tuned to get better battery life,
make the fan quieter or boost performance beyond the default on your Steam Deck. First, I want to thank everyone who
tuned into the stream last week, I'll be doing more of them from now
on, and I hope to see you there. Second, I'd like to thank all donors,
patrons, and the legend Kirk in Discord, for making this video possible
by financing another Steam Deck. I didn't wanna risk my only Deck by
pushing the limits of what's possible with overclocks and undervolts, so
having another made this video release much earlier than I'd anticipated. Third, this video will cover undervolting
the Deck, increasing available TDP, and overclocking the CPU, SOC and GPU. I've been attempting to do memory
overclocking, but neither of my Decks seem to have measurable improvements
using it, so it requires further investigation and may be part of an
advanced overclocking video in the future. Next, don't forget to like,
subscribe, and ring the bell down below so you don't miss the next
video, Hogwarts Legacy's Deck Dive. Trust me that you won't wanna miss it, the
performance is way better than default. I've left chapters on this video so
you can skip to individual processes, but some later sections in this
video depend on earlier sections. As a result, I highly recommend
that you follow along for the entire video and either do the tweaks
alongside me or watch the video again and do them on the second watch. On to testing methodology, all of
my testing and overclocking was done with a Q1 2023, 256GB Steam Deck with
no hardware alterations whatsoever. The only software changes I made
were changes shown in this video and installing CryoUtilities 2 to ensure that
all possible bottlenecks were removed. If you've ended up here prior to
installing CryoUtilities, I recommend doing that first as there's no risk, check
the description for a link to the video. Every benchmark present in this video
was tested with an in-game benchmarking tool if available, and I made sure to
heat soak the Deck for five minutes prior to each boot of each game tested
to ensure the ambient temperature wouldn't play as much of a role. On that note, the ambient temperature
in my apartment is 17 to 18 degrees Celsius, or 62 to 65 degrees Farenheit. Yes, the cryo in my username is
there because I like it very cold. I don't have a noise meter, so
fan sound recordings were all done with my iPhone 13 Pro's Noise
Meter app and recorded manually. Each was tested from half a meter
or about 1.5 feet away, since that's the distance I assume is most common. The room where I recorded is 28
decibels by default, and I made sure to record at a time with no interference. The stock Deck recorded an average
noise of 33 decibels under load, which is five over ambient. Alright, before I explain how to
undervolt and overclock, I need to put a big disclaimer on screen. This video is intended to be an
explanation and tutorial on how to do both undervolting and overclocking. Unlike CryoUtilities, which has
minimal to no risk, this process is not risk free, and if you push
the Deck, it can be very risky. By doing it incorrectly, it could
prevent the deck from booting and it might even need an RMA. As long as you know what you're doing,
then you run very little risk of actually damaging the Deck, but I just wanna
say that I'm not responsible to any damage that happens to your Deck by
following the processes in this video. Valve has been very good about doing
RMAs on damaged Decks, but I can't guarantee that that will continue to
be the case, so as the last warning... HERE BE DRAGONS. In the event that your Deck doesn't
boot from a process I show in the video, then there's a way to revert
the changes you've done, a CMOS reset. Fortunately, it's very simple. First, make sure the Deck is completely
powered down with the screen off. Second, hold the volume down and three dot
buttons, and then press the power button. Hold the buttons until the symbol
appears on screen and then release. Now wait as your Deck reverts
all setting changes to default, it may take a few minutes. And there you go, everything
is reset to default. If your Deck doesn't boot after
this, then you likely need to reach out to Steam support. With all of that out of the way,
let's move on to our first major section, the silicon lottery and you. The silicon lottery is a cute
name for a complex topic. Essentially, during the manufacturing
process of any computer chips, there are natural deviations. Creating something with parts as
small and delicate as modern day circuits is incredibly difficult,
and even small deviations and materials can ruin the whole process. In some cases, these deviations
can cause some parts to become useless, some parts partially
useless, and some parts are perfect. For example, when making a processor, a
chip manufacturer has a certain yield, some processors get outright scrapped. This is called binning, and it's something
that happens on most computer chips. Some processors have a
few cores that don't work. Those usually get relabeled
to a different model with some cores disabled, and then sold. Most of the processors are made
successfully and sold as is, however, even in this group there are some deviations. Some processors barely meet the
required quality, and those are the ones that CPU manufacturers need
to account for when selling them. They need to make sure that all of that
model performs similarly, so they keep all of them at the speed and voltage
of the weakest link, so to speak. What that means, though, is that some
processors can perform much better, even if they're the same model. If you get a processor that can
handle much more than another, you've won the silicon lottery. During my testing, I found that one of
my Decks consistently had pretty bad results while the other Deck on the
desk back there had what I'd consider pretty good results consistently. So the variance is very
high in my experience. Now that you know what the Silicon Lottery
is, let's move on to the tool that we'll be using to both Undervolt and Overclock. Smokeless_UMAF allows us to access
a whole lot of BIOS settings that Valve's BIOS doesn't show us. To use it, you'll need :
a USB hub with at least two ports
that can be plugged into the Deck. You can use a single port,
but it's a real pain. A flash drive of any size. A real keyboard to plug in. Bluetooth will not work, so
make sure it's either wired or has a USB dongle like this one. Once you have those, plug the
flash drive into your Steam Deck and go into desktop mode. Now open KDE partition manager and enter
your sudo password, you should already have one if you've used CryoUtilities. Now click on the flash drive in
the section on the left, it'll probably be named USB disk. Next, press the new button in the bar
near the top and a new window will pop up, use the filesystem drop down and
select FAT32, and feel free to enter a name in the label field, then press okay. Last here, press apply in the top
bar and press apply in the popup. After it's complete, you'll
get a notification and you can close the windows. Next, click the USB drive in the
task bar and click mount and open on the USB drive in the menu. With that, our USB is formatted and we
just need to install Smokeless_UMAF. It can be found at the link on screen
now and in the description below. All you need to do is click
UniversalAMDFormBrowser.zip, and press the little download symbol in the upper right. Once it's downloaded, open
the zip file and drag the contents onto the flash drive. After that's done, so are you. We have a fully functional
Smokeless_UMAF installation. Now that we have it, let's move on
to an explanation of undervolting. As mentioned before, chip manufacturers
have to provide enough voltage so that every chip can run it, but
some chips can do the same amount of work with much less power. Undervolting is the process of
providing those chips less voltage. Your Deck will typically run a lot cooler,
which will also run the fan quieter. Undervolting can also help maintain
higher speeds for longer, which can help improve performance. It usually even improves the
battery life of the Deck, so let's see how much it helps. Elden Ring had similar results with a
small hits to the lows on the high preset, but CPU temperatures were two to three
degrees cooler, and GPU temperatures were two to five degrees cooler. The GPU alone pulled one to two
watts less when undervolted. Red Dead 2 had nearly identical FPS
statistics, but the CPU was five degrees cooler and the GPU also
remained frosty during testing, even after an extensive heat soak. With undervolting I was able to
go from one hour and 31 minutes of battery life to one hour and 46
minutes while stressing the Deck. That's a boost of 16 percent
to of battery life, despite performance being nearly identical. Fan noise when undervolted was slightly
lower than stock, averaging out at about 32 decibels under full load. Only four decibels louder than the
ambient and one lower than stock. Undervolting on the Steam Deck is fairly
low risk, but if you push it too far, then the Deck might not be able to boot. Most people are able to recover from
this using the process I stated earlier, but I'm aware of at least one RMA that
needed to be done from pushing it too far. That said, if you have a ch341a programmer
just happening to lay around and you know how to use it, you could recover with
that by restoring from a BIOS backup. The bottom line is that you don't
risk permanent damage by doing an undervolt, but you could need to do
an RMA anyway, with that out of the way, let's get into the tutorial. In order to undervolt, we need to boot
to smokeless, which is very simple. First, plug the USB with smokeless
installed into the Deck and shut the Deck completely down, I also recommend
attaching your keyboard at this time. Next, hold the volume down button
and press the power on button. Keep holding the volume down button until
the logo appears, and then let it go. Now choose your USB drive in the
menu that comes up and press A. It'll probably have the manufacturer
in the name, but mine is the cheap no-name drive, so I chose SMI here. Smokeless UMAF will boot
and you may notice something odd, the screen is sideways. That's because the Steam Deck's screen is
actually a sideways mounted tablet screen and the software rotates it 90 degrees. Unfortunately, we don't have that benefit
here, so the screen will always be shown sideways when we're in smokeless UMAF. I also recommend navigating
with your keyboard starting now. Go down to device manager and then press
enter, then AMD CBS and then enter. SMU debug options, and then
enter SMU feature config limits, and then press enter. This is where we'll be making
most of the changes today, and you'll be back here plenty. Go to SVI3 voltage Control and
change it from auto to manual, you'll see a few new entries underneath. The three parts that we'll be
undervolting are the CPU, chipset, and GPU, which you can see below as
VDDCR_VDD voltage offset, SOC, and GFX. The first thing that we're gonna
want to do is change the VDDCR_VDD voltage offset sign to negative. And then the VDDCR_VDD
voltage offset to 10. This will undervolt the
CPU by 10 millivolts. After those are set, press escape
three times until the prompt appears, then press y, then escape, and
then move down to continue, and then press enter to exit smokeless
and enter one more time to reboot. With that, you've officially undervolted. Unless you got incredibly
unlucky in the silicon lottery, you'll boot right back up. Now boot up a demanding game and test. It should behave the same as before
the undervolt, but maybe a bit quieter and drain a bit less power. If you can play for a few minutes, you're
likely good to push the undervolt further. When you're comfortable with the
stability of the undervolt boot back into smokeless the same way as before
and change the VDDCR_SOC offset signed a negative and the offset sign to
negative 10, and then repeat the testing. If you're still happy with the
stability, do the same for the GFX options and repeat the testing. If you get this far, then all three parts
are undervolted by 10 millivolts, which is a small but substantial undervolt. Now, if you wanna push it further,
then go through each setting again, increasing the voltage offset
by 10 on one setting each time. Eventually, you'll either have
instability in a game or your Deck will take a really long time. If you get to this point, then I
recommend booting back into smokeless and reverting the last setting you changed. It's possible to try changing another
offset to undervolt even further, but you may not want to keep on pushing it when
your Deck might not be able to handle it. Once you're happy with the
undervolt, then you're done. You can resume playing games or continue
on to overclocking if you'd prefer. To recap the undervolting process, boot
into smokeless, change SVI3, voltage control to manual, change all three
voltage offset signs to negative, set VDDCR_VDD to 10, boot and test, set
VDDCR_SOC to 10, boot and test, set VDDCR_GFX to 10, boot and test and then
repeat steps four through nine, Increasing the value by 10 each time until satisfied. I'll take a moment to cover some
questions that I think you guys will have about undervolting. Will undervolting brick my Steam Deck? As long as you follow the process I gave
you, and adequately test, there should be a very minimal risk of bricking. If you do somehow think you brick the
Deck, then follow the steps I specified earlier to reset CMOS and all your
settings in smokeless should be reverted. Does undervolting work in Windows? Yes, undervolting will work for any
OS and anything running on the Deck. What undervolt were you able to achieve? One of my Decks was able to reach -20
on all three offsets, and the other Deck was able to reach -40/-30/-30. What do I do if my Deck takes
a really, really long time to boot, or it doesn't seem to? I recommend holding the power
button to turn the Deck off completely, leaving it alone for a
few minutes and then trying again. If it still doesn't boot, then you
may need to reach out to support. And with that, I'm gonna reset my
undervolt to stock and move on to increasing the TDP of the Deck. TDP, or thermal design Power,
is how much power a chip uses .
On the Deck, when we say TDP,
we mean the amount of power that the APU can use, in watts. By default, the APU can use up to
15 watts, but you can change the limit right in the three dot overlay
to limit it lower if you want. 15 watts is the sweet spot for performance
per watt, which is probably why Valve chose it, but the fan in the Deck can
actually handle much more, albeit at a louder volume and a higher battery drain. In the case of overclocking, which
we'll do later, we'll need to increase the TDP beyond 15 watts
to provide the APU with more power. So how do you do it? The TDP increase is a bit more
difficult to do than undervolting, as it's a several step process. Before we do anything else, we
have to make sure that the old fan curve is enabled on the Deck. The new fan curve prioritizes sound
over thermal performance and can cause some overheating if enabled. In game mode, go to settings,
system, and scroll to the bottom and disable the updated fan control. That's it for the fan, let's move
on to actually increasing the TDP. The first step is to set the
TDP to maximum in the Deck's BIOS, so let's start there. Shut the Deck down completely, then hold
volume up and press the power button. When the logo appears, let go of
the volume button and you'll see a screen with four large buttons. Go to Setup utility, then advanced,
then set power control to manual and make sure that both the fast and
slow PPT limits are set to 15,000. Now, press the select button and then yes. Once that's done, you'll be back in
SteamOS and the first step is complete. The second step is using smokeless
to set the desired TDP limit. Boot back into smokeless, using the
same instructions as before, but this time go to device manager, then
AMD CBS, then SMU Common Options. Set TDP control to manual and then
set the TDP to the wattage you want to use, followed by three zeros. Then set PPT Control to manual and
set the fast PPT limit and slow PPT limit to the same value that
you set the TDP value earlier. Here you can see that I chose 18 watts,
so I enter 18000 in all three options. After those are set, press escape three
times until the prompt appears, then press y, then escape, then go down
to continue and press enter twice. With those two steps out of the
way, the hardest is behind us. The final step is to get SteamOS to
actually use the higher TDP limit, and for that we need PowerTools. To get PowerTools, first
you'll need Decky Loader. You may already have it, and maybe
even PowerTools, if that's the case, you can skip this section. Otherwise, watch on to
figure out how to install it. Go to desktop mode and open your browser. Then go to the Decky Loader repository
on GitHub, the link is on screen and in the description below. Next, we need to click on download, then
move the downloaded file to the desktop. Double click on install Decky and
enter your sudo password when asked, then choose release and press okay. With Decky installed, return to game
mode and press the three dot button, you should notice a small plug
symbol near the bottom of the panel. Navigate to it and then press A. Now, press the little marketplace
icon near the top, which opens the plugin store on Decky. Go down until you see the plugin
PowerTools, then press install on it and install again in the popup. After a moment, you should
see the menu appear again, and PowerTools will be present. To recap the TDP change process, disable
the updated fan curve in SteamOS, boot into BIOS and set both PPT values to
15,000, boot into smokeless, change TDP control and PPT Control to manual,
set TDP, fast PPT limit, and slow PPT limit to the desired wattage you want
to use, followed by three zeroes, boot and test, repeat steps five
through six, increasing or decreasing the values until you're satisfied. And then install Decky and PowerTools. Let's move on to some probable
questions about this process. I used PowerTools for overclocking
before, where's the pt_oc.json file? The pt_oc.json file isn't necessary
in PowerTools 1.3 or higher. PowerTools 1.2 had a bug which
had issues after sleep and resume when using an overclock. This was caused by attempting to
set the kernel to manual clock modes at frequencies it doesn't support. By avoiding pt_oc.json completely, using
the newer version and not manually setting frequencies, the kernel will clock up to
the limits you set and allow for you to set the TDP, as you'll see in a moment. In the future, it's possible that
the amdgpu kernel module will begin accepting unsupported frequencies,
but in the meantime there's no benefit to maintaining the pt_oc.json. What's a reasonable setting for wattage? Unless you know what you're doing, I would
recommend sticking to 20 watts or below. Is this harmful for the Deck? It shouldn't be as long as you
keep the numbers reasonable. Will increasing the TDP work in Windows? It should as long as the
drivers don't hold it back. That said, I haven't tested it directly. Isn't more heat really bad for the deck? The Deck's APU is actually rated
up to 105 degrees Celsius and the Deck will forcefully shut
off before that can be reached. If this happens, lower the TDP
settings by a watt and try again. This also applies to the
upcoming overclock process. Do I need to do this? Of course not, but it will allow your
deck to use more power and give you an edge in performance in many cases. What were your best results? One Deck was able to sustain 21
watts and the other was able to sustain 23 watts in all games. Can I change the TDP limit
in the Deck overlay still? Avoid using the built-in TDP limiter
since it keeps you at 15 watts or lower. Instead, use the PowerTools section
labeled power play limits, and set both bars to the wattage of your choosing. Note that using a TDP higher than you
currently have set in smokeless will just use the value that you set there. As an example, if you set the
TDP to 18 watts in smokeless and then use 30 in PowerTools, it
will still only use 18 watts. With questions hopefully answered, and
enough power to feed the beast, let's move on to an explanation of overclocking. So what is clocking and
how does it go over? Let's start with clocks in
regards to computer chips. A clock is essentially a very small
crystal in a chip that vibrates very quickly, and every time it
vibrates, the chip can do some work. The frequency at which it vibrates
is expressed in a unit of hertz. With one hertz meaning one vibration per
second, thus one operation per second. The chips that we have now are very
fast, and the CPU in the Steam Deck has a clock speed of 3.5 gigahertz,
which means that the crystal inside vibrates 3.5 billion times per second. The process of overclocking is basically
forcing the crystal to vibrate faster than it does by design, which in turn
increases the amount of operations per second that a chip can perform. Why is that important? Cyberpunk had averages on low increase by
9% and averages on high increase by 5%, along with a substantial boost to lows
and 97th percentile on the high preset. Elden Ring had a 6% and
4% boost to averages. As a result of the chip doing more work,
it consumes more power, which is why we increased the TDP earlier in the video. As a side effect of this, the battery
life is roughly 59 minutes when maxed out, which is a 35% reduction over my
baseline of one hour and 31 minutes. Fan noise when overclocked was
higher than stock, averaging out at 36 decibels under full load, which
is eight decibels louder than the ambient, and three higher than stock. If you want to know more about this,
then please subscribe because I plan to cover clock cycles and how we
teach rocks to think in future videos. But for now, this explanation should
suffice for the Deck in particular. First, we'll overclock the CPU using
our old pal smokeless once again. Boot back into smokeless, go to device
manager, then AMD CBS, SMU debug options, and SMU feature config limits, the same
place where we did undervolting earlier. Scroll down to CclkFmaxOverride control
and change it from auto to manual. Then go down one setting to
CclkFmaxOverride and set it to 3,600. The stock frequency of the CPU
is 3,500, so this means you'll get a 100 megahertz overclock. Exit out of smokeless the same way
as before by pressing escape three times until the prompt appears, then
Y, then escape one more time and go down to continue and hit enter twice. Now boot the Deck and start a demanding
game, then play for a few minutes and make sure everything is stable. Once you're satisfied,
your overclock is complete. If you wanna push the overclock further,
increase the value of CclkFmaxOverride by 100 again in smokeless, and then reboot. Here I'm setting it to 3,700 this time. You can repeat this process until
you have instability, the deck gets too hot or the fans get too loud. Once you find the right value for you,
you can either be done or you can continue on to overclocking the GPU as well. The process to overclock the GPU
is essentially the same as the CPU. Boot back into smokeless, device
manager, AMD CBS, SMU debug options, and then SMU feature config limits. Scroll down to GfxclkFmaxOverride
control, right below where we set the CPU. Change it from auto to manual,
go down one and set it to 1,700. The stock frequency of the GPU is 1,600,
so we're starting with a 100 megahertz over clock, the same as the CPU. Now, exit out of
smokeless, same as always. Boot the deck and do the same testing you
did earlier for the CPU overclock, making sure to pay attention to the temperatures,
fan noise and any potential crashing. Then repeat the process by increasing
the frequency by 100, until you're satisfied, or start seeing instability. To recap the Overclocking process, boot
into smokeless, change CclkFmaxOverride control to manual, set CclkFmaxOverride to
3,600, boot and test, repeat steps three and four, increasing CclkFmaxOverride by
100 each time until satisfied or until the numbers get higher than around 4,200,
change GfxclkFmaxOverride control to manual set GfxclkFmaxOverride to 1700,
boot and test, repeat steps seven through eight, increasing GfxclkFmaxOverride by
100 each time until satisfied, or until numbers get higher than around 2200. Let's go over some questions you
guys might have about overclocking. What's a reasonable overclock on the Deck? I would consider a CPU clock speed
of 3,800 megahertz and a GPU clock speed of 1800 megahertz to be fairly
safe for most people, as long as you haven't lost the silicon lottery. Is this harmful for the Deck? It can be if you push the frequency
too high, as long as you don't set the numbers to something crazy,
you should be fairly safe though. Will overclocking work in Windows? Yes, it should. What were your best results? My first Deck had 3,800 on CPU,
1900 on GPU, and my second Deck had 4,000 on CPU and 2000 on GPU. Okay, so now that we've undervolted,
increased the TDP and overclocked at the same time, where does that leave us? We can do all three at the same time. Using the instructions from each section,
you can find a good balance where undervolting will save you some power
and heat, and you can use that overhead to increase your overclock even further. In my case, I was able to set my deck
to negative 40, negative 30, negative 30 on undervolt, increase the TDP to
23 watts, overclock the CPU to 4,000 megahertz, and the GPU to 2000 megahertz. Let's see some comparisons to see
what it did for my performance. Cyberpunk gets 9% and 7% boosts to
averages for low and high respectively, but the major win here is in the
lows with 1% getting a 16% boost and 0.1% getting a 27% boost on high. Elden Ring gets a modest boost of
4% to averages on low, but the lows are, once again, the star of the show
here with boosts across the board. And Returnal gets 5% and 8%
better averages for low and high respectively, plus much higher 97th
percentile results, and a healthy boost to lows on the low preset. Despite this looking like a fairly
minor improvement, the actual gameplay felt quite a bit smoother and was
a locked 30 in some places, even without any upscaling whatsoever. With FSR, it got even smoother,
although I didn't take any dedicated benchmarks for that. All of this was while maintaining an
average battery life of one hour and 25 minutes while going full tilt,
which is only a 7% decrease from the one hour and 31 minutes I get
in an identical situation without either overclocking or undervolting. Fan noise when both overclocked and
undervolted was identical to stock. Averaging out at 33 decibels under full
load, which is five decibels louder than ambient, even with the old fan curve. Hopefully you can see that
these modifications can be a huge boost to performance. I just want to take one second to
reiterate that not everybody can expect the same results as I've gotten. Some will get higher and some
will get lower depending on your place in the Silicon lottery. As an example, my original Deck here
was only able to get -20 on all three undervolts, a TDP of 21 watts, a CPU
overclock of 3,800 megahertz, and a GPU overclock of 1800 megahertz, which is
significantly worse than the new Deck. You may wanna see more overclocking in
action, and I have good news for you, my next video will be a Hogwarts Legacy
Deck Dive with overclocking results. The performance with the tweaks I found
was already a big boost, but I can promise you that you won't be disappointed
by the performance with overclocking. What I found was enough to move
this video ahead of the Hogwarts video, so make sure that you: like the video if you want
to see me stream more, I'm contemplating on streaming Tears
of the Kingdom when it releases. Comment what values you manage to get
for your undervolts and overclocks, I'd really like to know what the Silicon
Lottery is like on the Steam Deck. Subscribe and ring the bell to be
notified when the new Hogwarts video releases, along with some really exciting
hardware modding that I have planned. Well, there you go. It's a brief, but hopefully comprehensive
intro and tutorial to both undervolting and overclocking on the Steam Deck. While researching for this video, I
found that many of the tutorials weren't very in depth and didn't explain why
you may want to do any of these things. So I hope that you learned something
from this video and are able to implement it if you choose to. I'd like to thank all of my patrons,
YouTube members and donors for helping me get the Steam Deck
in order to make this video. If you're interested in supporting
me, check out my Patreon linked on screen, and in the description below. You get sneak peeks, ad-free
viewing and access to a patron-only section on Discord. If you want more free performance boosts,
or wanna learn a little bit more about your computer, then click on screen to
check out my CryoUtilities 2 launch video. Thank you all for watching
and have a great day!
