Asus Confirms ROG Ally Might Roast Your SD Cards Alive

Handheld gaming has come a long way since the Game Boy. Today, you can get powerful handhelds like the Switch and Steam Deck, and more competitors are arriving all the time. Asus is going after the handheld market with the ROG Ally, a Windows-powered game machine that renders games in even higher quality than the Steam Deck. However, it turns out this device has been roasting SD cards alive. Asus says it's on the case, though.

It didn't take long after the Ally launched a few weeks ago for gamers to notice microSD card failures. Sometimes the cards would no longer be recognized, or the transfer speeds could tank. Ally owners have been complaining on Asus' community forums since shortly after the launch, and an Asus rep has finally replied with concrete details.

Unfortunately, it's not a driver issue, as some had speculated. No, this is a good old-fashioned heat issue. The ROG Ally is lighter and more compact than the Steam Deck, but it has a more powerful AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme CPU, which can use up to 30W of power. The Steam Deck's Zen 2 APU tops out at 15W. According to Asus, the Ally's core components are cooling correctly, but the SD card reader can't handle the heat. "After confirmation from internal testing, under certain thermal stress conditions, the SD card reader may malfunction," the rep said.

This diagram shows the push-push-style card slot on the top of the device. Credit: Asus

Asus does not expound on what the "certain conditions" are, but we can safely assume long gaming sessions exacerbate the problem. Asus says it's working on a software update to address the issue by increasing the minimum and maximum fan speeds to keep the internals cooler. That means more fan noise will come from the Ally soon, but it could keep your microSD card reader from dying. Asus says it will try to keep the noise from getting out of hand.

For Ally owners already experiencing card reader issues, you might be in for a frustrating customer service experience. The readers may be permanently damaged by high heat; the only way to fix that is to replace the component. That means shipping the device to Asus and waiting until it can be tested and repaired. The Ally retails for $700, and some gamers might be more apprehensive about buying one until we know if the SD card reader will be an ongoing issue. If you wait a few months, the cheaper Ally with a non-Extreme CPU will be available for a little less. Hopefully, that device will launch with a cooler card reader.