As cool because the Steam Deck appears to be like with RGB lighting, you may not wish to try to mod your gadget simply but. One Reddit person who tried the mod discovered that whereas including the RGB LEDs doesn’t draw a big quantity of energy from the battery, it could possibly trigger fairly large points with the Steam Deck’s motherboard.

The “RGBDeck” mod began making the rounds on Reddit earlier this month, with u/WUBBSY documenting the method of affixing a small microcontroller and LED strips to the gadget. They topped it off with a clear backing from JSAUX, permitting the lights to shine via the case whereas the Steam Deck’s switched on. The top outcome offers the Steam Deck a pleasant pop of colour (in a really gamer PC type of method).

Adam Honse (u/CalcProgrammer1), the developer behind the open-source lighting platform OpenRGB, additionally tried the mod and even got here up with an integration that lets customers regulate the Steam Deck’s lighting via the app. Nevertheless, Honse has since posted an replace on Saturday night time that advises in opposition to attempting it, noting that it “appears to be a big harm on the motherboard.”

In response to Honse, the supply of the difficulty is a tiny element “that didn’t just like the added energy draw on the interior USB connection between the motherboard and controller PCB,” the place he sourced the 5V wanted to energy the RGB lights. That piece ended up failing after just a few days, inflicting the lights and controller to exhibit some funky conduct earlier than they stopped working altogether.

It additionally did some injury to a element on the Steam Deck’s motherboard, which is meant to chop off the 5V of energy to the controller board when the gadget is in sleep mode. As defined by Honse, that piece not switches the ability off to the controller when the Steam Deck’s on standby, inflicting the gadget to lose energy. “We’ll must discover a new supply of 5V energy that may deal with larger present,” Honse explains.

In different phrases, the mod simply isn’t there but, and that’s okay; I’m simply glad Honse got here ahead earlier than different modders go breaking their Steam Decks. Hopefully, it gained’t be too lengthy till we see a doable resolution (at the very least till Valve decides to include RGB into the Steam Deck by default).