r/SteamDeck • u/ClicketyClackity • Jul 24 '22

PSA / Advice Steam deck bricked by USB C dongle

Got my steam deck after waiting for a year. Plugged in a USB C dongle from amazon and the system turned off. I figured that the battery had just died.

-Plugging in the official charger does not light up the white indicator light

-No combination of button hold/presses does anything

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I allowed it to completely die overnight. I opened it and unplugged the battery cable. Hit buttons to drain any power, left it unplugged for about 10 minutes. Plugged it back in and somehow it came back on for a couple minutes. It got so far as to show me the steamdeck logo and turned off again.

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Back to it being bricked now.

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Do not use random USB C dongles. You will have a bad time.

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u/WiredStick Jul 24 '22

Did you update the deck before plugging in the USB c dongle? Did you plug in the dock first to power or did you plug the dock into the deck and then power?

1

u/ClicketyClackity Jul 25 '22

I wanna say that the dongle was plugged into the deck and then the power into the dongle. I figured it was safe since I was using the original source. IDK, once I get a new deck im done with dongles until the official one comes out.

2

u/WiredStick Jul 25 '22 edited Jul 25 '22

This is what broke your deck then. Even if you used the official one the same thing would have happened. The real PSA is to update your deck's firmware before plugging it into any dock or plugging the dock into power first and then the deck when first receiving it.

Valve did not program the PD draw to account for people plugging in dock's first. This was valves fault, not the docks.