Reports of the Steam Machine’s Cylon-like behavior have increased, and it appears that a reset may be all that is needed to resolve the issue. 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 no longer 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 the entire LED strip indicates overheating of the CPU (more than 95 °C) or the GPU (more than 90 °C).
- In contrast, a pulsating red light in the right quarter of the LED strip indicates that no RAM could be detected.
- A red pulsating light in the second quarter of the LED strip from the left, however, 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 in 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,
If you’re encountering this issue, please try the following:
- Unplug the Machine, then press the power button a few times. This ensures any stored energy in the PSU gets discharged. You may see the power indicator LED blip a moment.
- Plug the Machine back in. Note if your power LED glows (breathing 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 power button down for ~6s. You should see the power indicator LED (dot) flash momentarily. Release the power button when you do.
- The power indicator LED will start to cycle some color codes. These are designed to allow you to select various options for recovery/troubleshooting purposes. When the LED turns green, short-press the power button. This should perform a full “CMOS reset.”
- On the next boot, you should see the RGB bar as blue – it may take a bit longer to boot due 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: Due to a miscommunication, the front panel code is actually 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 it, its possible that the Steam Machine update process needs some refining, but until then, users experiencing the “Red Line of Death” need to perform these steps to reset it. Time will tell how effective this process is and if it truly solves the problem, but here’s hoping the best for new owners of the Steam Machine.