this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
197 points (95.8% liked)
PC Gaming
14972 readers
787 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you have to keep it unplugged for a couple of hours it does not seem like a fix.
But well, if it happens again he should return it, just to be sure.
Leaving it unplugged means capacitors drain. Not sure what issues that would solve that wouldn’t be related to hardware failure.
Still, only a single hardware failure reported so far and some news outlets ran with “MAJOR failure in Steam Machine, GabeN in shambles, Valve BTFO, Sony was right all along, apologize to Nintendo right now”
A random bit flip in memory. Sometimes errors can be retained.
That's a hardware issue
Edit: I guess it's more of a physics issue, but still not a software issue.
Yeh, but is extremely outside of any manufacturers control for consumer level gear.
For mission-critical satellites or space crafts, then it's either a 3-way-quorum or extremely ruggedised processors specifically designed for the radiation of space (with a massive performance penalty).
It's not something you buy off the shelf. It is a specific requirement that is built in at all levels of hardware, firmware and software.
So, if the steam machine is designed for high radiation environments then it's steams fault.
Seeing as it isn't, a cosmic bit flip that is actually able to impact hardware negatively is so extremely unlikely that it isn't Steam's issue. At all.
I didn't say it would be Steam's fault. Just that a bit flip is a hardware issue, not a software one.
Eh you know how's the hate train. It drives way more clicks to just create ragebait than to report news.
In the videogame world however, seems to be worse as the average "journalist" is basically a guy who can put letters together.
Over heating can behave like this, but doesn’t seem likely.
Ya having to keep it unplugged would tell me that something is on the brink of total failure.
Whether this is a one off case or turns into a wide spread issue I'd be asking for a replacement.