We’ve received a couple of initial reports of Steam Machine crashes, describing a red light indicator of a problem that means the PC won’t turn on, something that will be very familiar to those who have owned an Xbox in the past.
One Redditor posted (see below) that his “Steam Machine was great for the 20 minutes it ran,” detailing how things went wrong and how the PC ended up displaying a ‘Red Line of Death’ and wouldn’t boot, reminiscent of the ‘Red Ring of Death’ visited by some unfortunate Xbox 360 owners (myself included).
The Redditor tells us that they played five minutes of no man’s sky before noticing an update for the Steam Machine, which they installed, and then the device crashed.
Well, Steam Machine was great for the 20 minutes it ran from r/steammachine.
After the update, it failed to start and the owner was staring at a red light on the right side of the Steam Machine light bar. After some digging, it was discovered that this indicates a “GPU failure,” according to Valve’s troubleshooting information on the Steam Machine LED.
The owner contacted Valve for help, but as of this writing, support has yet to respond to them (or at least they haven’t updated the Reddit thread with the details of what’s happening).
This is not a unique complaint, as there is another report of a GPU crash with the Steam Machine on the Steam forums. But clearly, we shouldn’t run for the hills in panic because this will be Valve’s own ‘red ring’ controversy that casts a hellish plague on this hardware release for the time being.
Analysis: KITT defective
While talk of Redditor’s Steam Machine being “locked” – meaning permanently dead – is premature, it’s unclear where things could go from here. Since in Redditor’s case it happened after an update, perhaps it’s reversible (the other post on the Valve forums, where the PC immediately crashed on first boot, sounds more definitely terminal).
However, in both cases, a GPU failure doesn’t sound good, and while it’s possible to resolve it by snooping around and attempting a recovery with the PC, the buyer on Reddit is wisely waiting for instructions from Valve’s support team.
I’m betting this will be a return eventually (with both PCs), and I think it’s for the best, as I would be worried if a device I bought had an initial problem like this, as I fear it’s something that could resurface later.
Of course, some point out that the problem is that providing the buyer with a new unit may not be a quick process, given the limited stock of the Steam Machine so far. But Valve will obviously have some contingency plans for possible returns, since they will inevitably happen.
That’s another thing we need to make clear here: just because we’ve seen one Red Line of Death (well, two) doesn’t mean everyone should panic about the quality of Valve’s hardware. There will be a percentage of defective devices, that is the reality and we currently only have a couple of reports.
However, if these problems continue, it is obviously a different matter and we could be looking at a more difficult situation for Valve. Time will tell, but for now let’s stay away from the aforementioned hills.
In any case, at least the red line looks a lot cooler than the red ring. Reminds me of KITT in knight rideror the Cylons in Galactic Battlestaralthough the light should be pulsing back and forth, of course.
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