More fans equal more performance, right? That's the age-old debate PC hardware enthusiasts have as they try to figure out exactly when adding more cooling hardware to gaming rigs will reach a state of diminishing returns. We've tried to tackle these questions, telling you how to set up your PC's fans to maximize airflow, how many fans your system should have, and which ones to buy. But what should you do to improve the thermal thresholds and cooling performance of your great PC gaming handheld?

Gaming handheld accessory brand Jsaux thinks the solution is to add a beefier, external cooling fan to your Steam Deck. By adding a battery-powered, USB-C cooler to the back of your Steam Deck LCD or OLED, Jsaux says you'll see up to a 15-18°C drop in GPU and CPU temperatures. You might be able to pull a little bit of extra performance out of your gaming handheld hardware as a result of the cooler temperatures.

To say that I was skeptical would be an understatement, which is why I put this external cooling solution to the test on my Steam Deck LCD. The results were incredibly surprising, to say the least.

How the Jsaux cooling fan works

It's all about taking some of the load off your Steam Deck

There's this notion in the mobile gaming industry that the solution to your performance problems is to slap a fan on your device. Razer makes a cooling fan for the best smartphones, and Asus offers custom cooling hardware for its ROG Phone. While these accessories might help reduce surface temperatures, they're not going to do much in the way of cooling and performance unless they connect to the device's internal cooling system. That's why I had doubts about Jsaux's cooling fan before it even showed up at my door.

As it turns out, Jsaux thought of this and designed its cooling fan to work with the Steam Deck's internal cooling system. Valve shipped the Steam Deck LCD and OLED models with an intake on the back and an exhaust on the top of the handhelds. So, how does this Jsaux accessory fit in?

It attaches to the back and top of the Steam Deck, connecting to the device's exhaust vents. The additional fan blasts air out the top of the accessory, pulling hot air out of the Steam Deck and improving air circulation. The whole thing can create a vacuum effect, sucking in fresh and cool air while blowing hot air out of the cooling system. After seeing Jsaux's vision for this accessory, I was a bit more optimistic about its potential effectiveness. Still, it remained to be seen how or if the fan affected performance and component temperatures.

Does it actually improve performance and lower temps?

To the first question, maybe, to the second, yes

I've been an Asus ROG Ally and Ally X user for a while, and just gave in and bought a Steam Deck this summer. While the performance offered by all three devices was impressive, their running temperatures were not. Shortly after starting a gaming session, it wasn't uncommon to notice my ROG Ally or Steam Deck get uncomfortably hot in certain places. And the air blowing out of each device's exhausts was extremely warm.

With that information in mind, the Jsaux cooling fan could be intriguing if it helped cool down the Steam Deck. I tested this with a few of the games I commonly play, like Grand Theft Auto and L.A. Noire, since I'm very familiar with how hot the Steam Deck runs under those conditions. I also tried other, more demanding games, but the results were conclusive. No matter which game I fired up, the Steam Deck ran significantly cooler with the Jsaux cooling fan helping out.

Playing GTA V Online at the highest graphical settings somewhat stressed the Steam Deck, hovering around and exceeding a 70% GPU utilization rate after about 10 minutes of gameplay. Under these conditions, the Steam Deck and its stock cooler allowed GPU temperatures to peak at 65-75°C. After flipping on the Jsaux cooler, temperatures dropped to the high 40s on still frames, the mid 50s during casual gameplay, and low 60s during intense graphical sequences.

In my real-world tests, the Jsaux cooling fan dropped GPU temps by about 10°C on average. You might get higher drops when maxxing-out the Steam Deck's GPU utilization, but it appears that the cooling fan's benefits are a bit less than the 15-18°C drop that Jsaux touts. For the CPU, I installed a game from scratch, and CPU utilization rate quickly climbed to about 50-60% for a sustained period. Without the extra cooling fan, the CPU temps hovered between 50-60°C. With the fan flipped on, that range was slashed to 37-42°C.

The bigger challenge was the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark, which was very GPU intensive, with utilization rates around 90%. With the Jsaux fan running, the Steam Deck's internal fan was able to turn off completely, and temperatures topped out at 53°C. By comparison, without the Jsaux accessory, GPU temperatures topped out at 70ºC and the Steam Deck's inbuilt fan reached 3300RPM.

So, the Jsaux cooling fan does indeed lower internal Steam Deck temperatures, but does it improve performance? Not by a significant margin, in my experience. You see, adding extra fans to a handheld like the Steam Deck will only improve performance by a significant margin if it is thermal-throttling. My Steam Deck LCD supports 60Hz, and I get around 60FPS in most of the games I play. That means there isn't much extra performance to be had, even with extra fans.

It's possible that with a Steam Deck OLED and some more demanding games, the extra cooling help will result in better performance. I wouldn't count on being blown away by the results, though. Instead, I think the Jsaux cooling fan is better used as a way to keep your CPU and GPU running at more comfortable temperatures. It's also a great way to reduce the strain on your Steam Deck's inbuilt cooler — I noticed the speed of the internal fan slowed by thousands of RPM while the Jsaux cooling fan was in operation.

This accessory definitely works as intended. It's designed to help keep your Steam Deck cool, and it does that. I didn't notice any parts of the Steam Deck getting particularly hot with the extra fan running, and did see CPU and GPU temps drop by about 10°C. Whether that results in significantly-improved performance will greatly depend on your hardware and the games you play. I wouldn't recommend the Jsaux cooling fan to everyone, but if you keep your expectations in check, it isn't a bad product at all.