Steam Machine has its own ‘red line of death’

The first wave of Steam Machine units has now begun shipping out to early buyers. Unfortunately, one early adopter has already encountered a serious issue, revealing that the system has its own version of the Xbox 360's ‘red ring of death'.

The report comes from an early buyer posting on Reddit, who explained that their Steam Machine initially booted and worked normally. The failure occurred after attempting to install a Steam update, at which point the system stopped functioning and displayed the red error light. Apparently, this red light appears when there has been a ‘GPU failure'.

While one failure out of thousands of units isn’t particularly newsworthy on its own, it does confirm what happens when a Steam Machine does break. If you power on the device and see a red LED instead of the usual blue, you’ll likely need to send the unit back for repair or replacement.

The timing is unfortunate given Valve’s earlier struggles to secure components and assemble enough units for launch. Supply constraints delayed the Steam Machine’s release multiple times, and if replacement parts remain limited, servicing failed units could take longer than usual.

KitGuru Says: Hardware failures are inevitable with any new device. Hopefully this turns out to just be an isolated case.

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