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Reports of the Steam Machine’s Cylon-like behavior have increased, and it seems that a reset could also be all that is required to resolve the difficulty. First reports of the “Red Line of Death”, an homage to the Xbox 360’s red circle of death, began circulating last week when users on Reddit reported that after installing an update, their Steam Machine not booted but then displayed a red line on its RGB strip. It was soon discovered that this particular diagnostic display correlated to a GPU error per Valve’s support page, where several others are listed.
- A continuous red light across your complete LED strip indicates overheating of the CPU (greater than 95 °C) or the GPU (greater than 90 °C).
- In contrast, a pulsating red light in the appropriate quarter of the LED strip indicates that no RAM may very well be detected.
- A red pulsating light within the second quarter of the LED strip from the left, nonetheless, reveals an SSD error.
- And a red pulsing light on the left side of the LED strip indicates a failed memory test.
Since then, a reply within the above-linked thread from Valve’s Steam support page has directed users experiencing this issue to perform a reset to clear the Steam Machine’s CMOS.
“Hello,
In the event you’re encountering this issue, please try the next:
- Unplug the Machine, then press the facility button a number of times. This ensures any stored energy within the PSU gets discharged. You might see the facility indicator LED blip a moment.
- Plug the Machine back in. Note in case your power LED glows (respiration pattern) white or not. If yes, please submit a Steam Support ticket and tag me, or send me a chat request with the ID.
- Hold the facility button down for ~6s. It is best to see the facility indicator LED (dot) flash momentarily. Release the facility button whenever you do.
- The ability indicator LED will begin to cycle some color codes. These are designed to mean you can select various options for recovery/troubleshooting purposes. When the LED turns green, short-press the facility button. This could perform a full “CMOS reset.”
- On the following boot, it’s best to see the RGB bar as blue – it might take a bit longer in addition attributable to a memory re-training.
Please tag me with a report if this gets your device back up and running. If not, please create a support ticket, and send me a chat request with the ticket ID. It should start with “HT-“.
Note: As a consequence of a miscommunication, the front panel code is definitely flipped horizontally out of the box. Since this happened right after (or during) a BIOS update, it’s very likely that the update didn’t fully complete, and is a memory training issue. The procedure above should force a fresh training.”
So there you have got it, its possible that the Steam Machine update process needs some refining, but until then, users experiencing the “Red Line of Death” must perform these steps to reset it. Time will tell how effective this process is and if it truly solves the issue, but here’s hoping the perfect for brand spanking new owners of the Steam Machine.