- There is a new red light issue with the Steam Machine
- This time, a solid red light appears, indicating that the device is heating up.
- This is not necessarily the case, and in fact the temperatures of the Steam Machine can be normal, and a bug in the BIOS can cause the light to come on
If you’re an early adopter and are worried about a red light showing on your steam machine while you’re gaming, there’s not necessarily anything to panic about, as apparently this temperature warning light is triggered by mistake.
VideoCardz noticed a thread on Reddit in which the original poster shared correspondence from Valve’s support team about what’s happening in terms of the red light turning on when the temperature is far from the intended warning threshold.
According to Valve’s Steam Machine Lightbar FAQ, the red light turns solid (across the entire bar) when the device is considered overheating, meaning the CPU temperature is above 95°C or the GPU is above 90°C (or even both).
The Redditor noticed that the red light was on when his Steam Machine was at temperatures of 75°C and 81°C for the GPU and CPU respectively, which should not have caused the warning light to appear.
As Valve’s post explains, there is a “known issue with the current BIOS” that means the red light turns on “much earlier” than it should.
The problem is entirely related to the temperature threshold of the light, and the steam engine in no way overheats in these cases, it should be noted.
Valve’s message informs us that a BIOS update will be available soon to resolve the issue. In fact, this update will increase the threshold to 100°C for the CPU and GPU, which is the point at which the Steam Machine will limit components to ensure they don’t heat up any further.
In case you are wondering if the CPU or GPU exceeds 100°C, then the device will shut down to protect itself from any potential damage.
Analysis: false alarm
This means that if you see the light a little red, it’s probably a symptom of this excessive BIOS turning the light on much earlier than it should be. Chances are your CPU and GPU are performing well enough, and you can check this using the Steam Performance Monitor or a third-party tool like Redditor did.
In any case, even if you see the red light and it correctly indicates temperatures at Valve’s threshold levels, this will not damage the steam engine – it just means that the components will be slowed down to operate more slowly to avoid such damage. If this does not work and the component temperature is not brought back under control as instructed, the PC will shut down on its own to avoid any potential GPU or CPU frying scenarios.
It’s not nice to think that your steam engine is slowing down and not working as fast as it should, if that happens – but based on this (and other) reports of this incident, that’s not the case, and the only mistake is the light coming on when it shouldn’t. There’s no overheating, throttling, or anything else going on under the hood.
If you’re worried that Valve’s new throttling temperatures and warning light seem high at 100°C, that’s about what you’d expect from AMD laptop parts (which are used for the Steam Machine’s CPU and GPU).
For now, all those who purchased one of Valve’s gaming PCs can do is wait for the next BIOS update which should hopefully resolve this issue. It’s also worth noting that the “Red Line of Death” is a completely separate issue, and we’ve received troubleshooting tips on this thornier issue since it was first highlighted.
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