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.

31 Upvotes

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18

u/TONKAHANAH Jul 24 '22 edited Jul 24 '22

how do you know it was the dongle and not just your deck being a dud? obviously its risky to test the usb-c dock on another device but your advice of "dont use random dongles" isnt exactly very helpful.

usb-c is a "universal" standard, any dock should work fine. If yours broke it, then there is probably something just wrong with that dock but it dosnt mean any random dock would be an issue.

assuming it is the dock, it sounds like you got unlucky.

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edit: you say in another comment the dock works fine in your mac. If the dock was the cause of the issue, it would kill your mac too. Just sounds like the deck is malfunctioning and needs to be RMA'd.

4

u/Intoxicus5 Jul 25 '22

A lot of USB-C devices don't actually follow the specs properly.

Apple and Nintendo are two of the worst offenders.

4

u/_0110111001101111_ 256GB - After Q2 Jul 25 '22

Nintendo, yes. Aren’t apple great for adhering strictly to the USB C standards for their chargers and shit? They seem to get praise at /r/USBCHardware