Steam Machines with the ‘Red Line of Death’ get a simple, official cure: Clear the CMOS — clearing the CMOS can revive flat(red)-lining cubes

News
By
Published

Valve’s official social media team has shared a step-by-step process for reanimating RLOD Steam Machines.

Steam Machine red line of death
(Image credit: u/me_hill/Reddit)

Late last week, we reported on a brand-new Steam Machine getting bricked during an update, and refusing to budge from a state freshly dubbed the ‘Red Line of Death’ (RLOD). The issue stirred fear in tech enthusiasts' hearts, still scarred by the notorious Red Ring of Death (RROD) from the Xbox 360 era. But we have some good news today, as Valve’s official account on Reddit has responded to provide step-by-step instructions to get any affected Steam Machine up and running again by clearing the CMOS.

Thankfully, the pronouncement of death was definitely premature in this unresponsive Steam Machine case, and easily fixed. It wasn’t dead, it was resting, or probably pining for the fjords. It just needed to have its CMOS setting thoroughly cleared, that's all.

SteamHWFeedback directly answered the distress call of OP me_hill on Reddit. A five-step recipe to recover Steam Machines with RLOD was provided to the beleaguered gamer. However, me_hill’s own flailing machine-reset procedure had already done the trick – inspired by numerous user comments on the thread.

Latest Videos From

It is good to have an official solution to the initially scary RLOD, though. For the sake of exactitude, we have pasted Valve’s official RLOD fixing steps below, verbatim.

If you're encountering this issue, please try the following:

  • Unplug the Machine, then press the power button a few times. This ensures any stored energy in the PSU gets discharged. You may see the power indicator LED blip a moment.
  • Plug the Machine back in. Note if your power LED glows (breathing pattern) white or not. If yes, please submit a Steam Support ticket and tag me, or send me a chat request with the ID.
  • Hold the power button down for ~6s. You should see the power indicator LED (dot) flash momentarily. Release the power button when you do.
  • The power indicator LED will start to cycle some color codes. These are designed to allow you to select various options for recovery/troubleshooting purposes. When the LED turns green, short-press the power button. This should perform a full "CMOS reset."
  • On the next boot, you should see the RGB bar as blue - it may take a bit longer to boot due to a memory re-training.

There’d only been two public pleas by Steam Machine users about RLOD so far, as far as we can see. Perhaps several more users resolved these issues themselves, without any social media interaction, so it is difficult to know the scale of similar experiences. Nevertheless, we are relieved to learn that these symptoms are easily fixed and users can get back up and running on their coveted new gaming hardware pretty quickly – with the benefit of an officially sanctioned cure direct from Valve.

Google Preferred Source

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Delbiie
    Great idea in theory, but this will also clear EXPO (AMD XMP equivalent) forcing the RAM to run at JDEC speeds. You'd need to manually go into the bios and enable EXPO again. Unless they hard-coded the RAM speeds and timings, but I do have my doubts.

    I'm open to be corrected on this.

    Unless you know roughly what you're doing, I cannot recommend a CMOS reset.
    Reply
  • hwertz
    That color code thing to access different recovery modes using just the power button is VERY clever.

    Delbiie said:
    Great idea in theory, but this will also clear EXPO (AMD XMP equivalent) forcing the RAM to run at JDEC speeds. You'd need to manually go into the bios and enable EXPO again. Unless they hard-coded the RAM speeds and timings, but I do have my doubts.
    I mean they did say in the article that the post clear reboot 'may' take longer due to memory retraining. I don't have first hand experience with any enthusiast setups but i think retraining is niot a thing at jedec speeds. I. e. it wipes the EXPO/XMP timings (as a CMOS clear should) but presumably factory default in the Steam Machine BIOS is EXPO/XMP enabled.

    This does make it a bit unusual compared to a standard console since you'll get some system to system variation depending on exactly how high the RAM in your particular unit clocks. But it's nice (as long as the training ensures stabulity) to get the best possible speeds rather than making them all uniform.
    Reply
  • CelicaGT
    Delbiie said:
    Great idea in theory, but this will also clear EXPO (AMD XMP equivalent) forcing the RAM to run at JDEC speeds. You'd need to manually go into the bios and enable EXPO again. Unless they hard-coded the RAM speeds and timings, but I do have my doubts.

    I'm open to be corrected on this.

    Unless you know roughly what you're doing, I cannot recommend a CMOS reset.
    Neither the Deck, nor the Machine run overclocked RAM by default. Clearing the CMOS simply resets everything to how Valve had it. It's a perfectly fine step to take when troubleshooting either.

    Note that you can change CPU/GPU and SoC voltage offsets but in my experience the effects are marginal.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Does the fix actually fix though? Do we have confirmation on that?
    Reply
  • teeejay94
    Delbiie said:
    Great idea in theory, but this will also clear EXPO (AMD XMP equivalent) forcing the RAM to run at JDEC speeds. You'd need to manually go into the bios and enable EXPO again. Unless they hard-coded the RAM speeds and timings, but I do have my doubts.

    I'm open to be corrected on this.

    Unless you know roughly what you're doing, I cannot recommend a CMOS reset.
    Think more console less computer. Ram probably runs standard 4800MT for DDR5 or whatever equivalent
    Reply
  • cyrusfox
    What a horrible misname meant to grab headlines... It can't be a red line of death unless it is actually dead like the ring of death was on the xbox360, not an appropriate name at all. Red line of memory error with simple resolution upon first google search. While the Red Ring of Death was essentially a death sentence for the console, due to cracked solder joints beneath the GPU, Which happened due to intense heat cycles which caused the mobo to warp and the high clamping force of the heatsink. That was usually unrecoverable, this is a minor inconvenience.
    Reply
  • palladin9479
    teeejay94 said:
    Think more console less computer. Ram probably runs standard 4800MT for DDR5 or whatever equivalent

    Website is mostly PC enthusiasts so they always want to compare everything to the desktop gaming rig they built. Steam Machine is absolutely a console, just an unlocked open console where the user can install anything they want on it. The manufacture, Valve, doesn't lock the console down to only their signed firmware, of course they won't support anything you do that isn't their firmware but that's why you can always reset to factory defaults.
    Reply