One of the lucky early buyers of a Steam Machine has been unlucky enough to encounter a red warning LED on the front panel. Unfortunately, that red light indicates a GPU failure, meaning the buyer will have to send it back. They’ll get it repaired and returned, but with availability so poor, they’d better cross their fingers that Valve has replacement hardware on hand.
Like many consoles and systems designed not to be opened or maintained by the user, Valve uses a number of LED indicators to help diagnose problems quickly. The LED light bar on the front points to issues like an overheating CPU, memory not being recognized, or the SSD not being detected. And there’s one for GPU failure, too, which appears to be what this particular user is experiencing.
Credit: Valve
The Steam Machine support page highlights how Valve uses its light bar and LED indicator combination to indicate different problems. A solid red bar and a solid LED point to CPU or GPU overheating. A small red bar highlight with a solid red indicator means the system cannot detect memory.
But half a red bar, breathing, with a solid LED suggests GPU failure. That’s what our unfortunate Steam Machine buyer is facing.
Coined the “Red Line of Death” (RLOD) by Reddit users in homage to the classic Windows Blue Screen of Death and the Xbox 360’s Red Ring of Death, this appears to be the first public instance of this error. There doesn’t seem to be a flood of other users experiencing it, so it doesn’t appear to be a widespread problem. The fact that the user said it happened after only 20 minutes, though, suggests it wasn’t user error.
That’s good for the owner, as they should now be able to return it for repair or replacement. But that may well depend on Valve’s stock. The brand is famously out of stock of the new system, and it may take months for more stock to arrive. Here’s hoping there are at least some parts on hand for repairs, so this buyer can get their system back up and running quickly.
