A Steam Machine user has reported a flashing red half light bar of death after the device encountered a GPU failure.
In their Reddit post, user me_hill claimed to have used their Steam Machine for around 20 minutes before the device displayed a flashing red half light bar of death, which, as per Steam Support, indicates a GPU failure.
When asked whether they were able to reload SteamOS on their Steam Machine via a USB drive, the user clarified that this wouldn’t be possible as they weren’t getting any output on their monitor. They mentioned that they were able to get 5 minutes of playtime in No Man’s Sky, after which they installed the latest available update. That is when the device “bricked itself,” according to them.
Upon going through the Steam Support reference page for the Steam Machine LED, the user discovered that the flashing red half light bar they were seeing is in fact the error light code for a GPU failure.
According to the Steam Support page for the Steam Machine LED, the device’s light bar can display up to 3 colors i.e. white, blue, and red, each indicating different things. It can also display in various patterns, making it easier for the user to understand its current state of operation. A solid red light bar means CPU temperatures are above 95C and/or GPU temperatures are above 90C, a pulsating red fourth quadrant light bar means the system cannot detect memory (RAM), a pulsating red right half light bar means a GPU failure (as mentioned above), a pulsating red second quadrant light bar means the system cannot detect the SSD, and a pulsating red left half light bar means the memory training has failed.
For the uninitiated, the base Steam Machine comes with 512GB of NVMe SSD storage and costs t 1,049 US Dollars with no controller and 1,128 with the Steam Controller. Meanwhile, the higher-end 2TB model costs 1,349 US Dollars without a controller and 1,428 US Dollars with a controller.
