Steam Machine gets its first Red Line of Death report

The Steam Machine has seen its first public hardware failure linked to the so-called Red Line of Death. A Reddit user reported that the device worked for about 20 minutes before a red line appeared on the case and the system stopped booting. By analogy with the legendary Red Ring of Death on the Xbox 360 and the Yellow Light of Death on the PlayStation 3, the new indicator has already been nicknamed RLOD.

Unlike classic consoles, the Steam Machine is formally still a compact gaming PC, but Valve has built its own visual error system for it. Steam’s support page describes several red-line variants that point to different types of faults. In the published case, the line appears from the center toward the right side, and according to support data, that pattern corresponds to a GPU failure.

The most awkward part is that the graphics chip in the Steam Machine is soldered to the board. In a regular desktop PC, the user could replace a discrete graphics card, but here DIY repair is effectively off the table: the device would have to be sent in for service or replaced under warranty. If the first batch is indeed limited, a quick swap may not be the easiest scenario.

The incident also adds fuel to criticism of the Steam Machine amid the already discussed questions around price and performance. The device looks interesting as a ready-made SteamOS PC, but at a high price it has to compete not only with consoles, but also with custom builds that may offer more power for less money. Another factor is that SteamOS is gradually expected to gain support across different PC platforms.

It is still too early to say whether the Red Line of Death is a widespread problem for early Steam Machine units or just a one-off defect in a single device. But the first public case already shows that buyers of the launch batch should keep a closer eye on the device during its first hours of use.