Someone built a custom liquid cooling loop for their Steam Deck because why not?

There are a lot of easy Steam Deck mods you can do, from swapping out the joysticks and face buttons to replacing the old LCD screen on the original model. But one Reddit user, u/2GGBoy7, took the idea to the extreme by building a fully custom liquid cooling loop for their handheld. It's just as crazy as it sounds. The user took desktop-grade components for a 240mm loop, with a mixture of hardline and flexible tubing, connected everything on a desk, and hacked away at the backplate of the Steam Deck to get the loop inside. A little liquid didn't transform the experience of actually using the Steam Deck, but it sure is interesting.

Custom liquid cooling on the Steam Deck

Why? Why not?

This is the type of mod that isn't even remotely practical, with even the modder themselves calling it "obviously overkill" for the Steam Deck. Even with the tiny built-in fan, the Steam Deck doesn't get too loud or run too hot. The semi-custom AMD SoC inside the Steam Deck tops out at just 15W, so it stays relatively cool considering the power of the Steam Deck. To actually get a performance advantage, the user ran UMAF Runtime Patcher and raised the 15W limit to 27W, allowing more power to the SoC to push higher clock speeds.

The clock speeds aren't too crazy, though. Originally, the user pushed the CPU from 3.5GHz up to 3.9GHz, and the GPU from 1.6GHz to 2GHz, all while setting a TDP of 22W. In order to push these clock speeds, the user undervolted the SoC but noticed the system would become unstable. The final product only comes with a 100MHz boost to both the CPU and GPU, along with a -10mV undervolt. "Instead of having one component run much faster while the other gets throttled, I chose to modestly overclock both by 100 MHz. This way they can operate more evenly under load, and the system stays stable, responsive, and cool," wrote the user.

With tubing cut into the back of the Steam Deck, the system obviously isn't portable anymore. The user has it set up in a dock, and they say that the deck is running at Full HD via the HDMI output. In games like Doom Eternal and Helldivers 2, they say temperatures hover around 50 degrees Celsius, while at idle, they're never above 30 degrees. That's a massive improvement in thermal performance, as the normal Steam Deck can easily climb over 80 degrees when pushed. It probably didn't lead to big performance gains — the Steam Deck SoC is only capable of so much — but the loop is working.

It should go without saying, but there isn't any reason to hack a custom liquid cooling loop onto your Steam Deck, even if it provides fantastic thermal results. Still, I'm glad someone decided to take the plunge on this project, if for nothing else than so the rest of us can see the results.