CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 2:12 am Post subject:

And this all differs from all other current electronic things how?

I actually took the plunge today and bought a defective 360 locally. Still in the (beat up) box, Microsoft warranty seal intact. 20 gig HD included. I'm off to Home Depot to get the screws and washers to repair this. I'll report if it works. It will be interesting to see in the next few days if as is 360s got for more or less money, or if they disappear from eBay entirely. Someone emailed the guy selling the defective one to me about MS recall. He didn't really care, but he said if he had known that info ahead of time, he would have sent it in.

It will also be interesting to see how MS copes with 1000's of defective units being sent in for warranty repair. I can't see them hiring 100s of more techs for short term employment. "I sent my 360 in 3 months ago and now MS has no record of it'.... I want to get 2-3 more repairs under my belt, and I'll start advertising the repair of said 360s locally on Craigslist. By the time you deal with customs and shipping, it will be faster and probably about the same price to get them repaired by and independent repair depot (me) rather than sending it to MS.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 4:30 pm Post subject:

I fixed mine, but not after a whole bunch of cursing. If anyone wants to repair the red circle of death, beware of one thing: One site lists some Lowe's part numbers for nylon and metal washers. I went to Home depot and found the 'same thing'.

Not quite. THe HD washers are thick enough so that when you screw the heat sink down, it wasn't making any contact with the chips. My unit went into instant overheating mode. I freaked, figuring I broke something taking the unit apart. It wasn't until I took the heatsinks back off and looked at the heat sink compound that I realised there weren't any 'squish' marks on it when heat sink meets chip,

I took the metal washer out and was very careful when tightening the heatsink to the chip, and the thing ended up working fine.

NOw to get $200 in today via Paypal so I can get the HD DVD drive.. Smile

Joust · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 9:51 pm Post subject:

you should not have done that Curt. It is still under warrantee and M$ would have replaced it. hopefully with a new heat sink design unit.

JustGreg · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 3098 Location: Kenosha, WI

JustGreg · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 3098 Location: Kenosha, WI

Forgot to ask Curt....was there any resoldering involved or just reworking their mounting method? I'm dying to tear into mine but I'll have to satisfy myself with pictures from xbox-scene.com.
All the leads on thsoe CPU's and GPU's would be a real ball buster to work with I'll bet. I guess if you have a nice hot iron with a wide blade tip you could drown the connections and then braided wick off the eccess. That's how I installed the memory chips on my original XBox when I increased it another 64MB.

Greg

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:11 pm Post subject:

Nope, no soldering. The scary thing is, the solution is to disconnect the fans and overheat the chips to the point that they resolder themselves! 500-600 degrees at each contact point under the chip! (unless they use a lower temp solder which I'm assuming they do. Stilll!!!!!

Do a Google search. After you run through 10 pages of articles about how MS is losing 100's of millions to do this recall, you'll find a few links, mostly pay sites, but there is one free site that gives the solution at no charge.

Joust · Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:31 pm Post subject:

These things use BGA chips. Make it very hard to work on.
you would have to have a setup to reball the chips and then solder them down. Thats some expensive gear. I guess M$ could provide new chips. but you would need the proper oven to solder them.

If your seal is intack. call M$ and deal with their warrantee process.

WanMan · Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 10270

If you have trouble raising the temps try wrapping the console in an electric blanket. Very Happy

Joust · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 1:51 pm Post subject:

Thats a good way to ensure it fails without opening it. THEN send it back to M$.

Z-Photo · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:00 pm Post subject:

and now Sony has dumped the PS3 price by $100.

eek

Joust · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:02 pm Post subject:

Game on....

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:21 pm Post subject:

Hey Joust, after repairing my second XBox console, I have a few points to make.

While the X clamps was a cute way to continue the Xbox logo within the unit, I have to say the thing is pretty well made. I've worked on lots of stuff since high school, and I think at any point in time if I'd opened this unit, I'd say it was really well built and designed.

Now, I'm not an engineer, but I do know how to fix stuff. If I was a service tech at MS, and an engineer would have given me an XBox prior to release and had me predict what would fail in one of these units down the road, I don't think I would have said that the solder joints under the CPU chips would die.

The one thing that I do note though is that the heat sink fins will eventually get clogged with dust. THEN I could see problems occurring.

As for Sony cutting pricing... Heeeeeeeere we go again. Everyone makes less money, they'll develop problems as well, then Sony will need to extend their warranty, then it all goes to sh*t.

I'm sooo tired of this game (pun intended).

BTW, I thought there was some decent markup in the RS1. From what I know of dealer cost and typical street price, there's about a 14% markup. What a joke!

Joust · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:35 pm Post subject:

OK,
here is the Xbox 360 comedy of errors.

#1 the GPU is under the DVD drive so there is less space for the heat sink therefor its smaller. Not a problem by itself.

#2 the fan shroud has two fans not segregated.

#3 normal operation , the GPU heats up and should speed up the fans. BUT...the CPU gets plenty of air flow so it stays cool so it doesn't speed up the fans. therefor the GPU gets hotter.

#4 IF the fans go faster, most air still goes through the CPU heat sink. Path of least resistance for airflow.

#5 here is where things go horribly wrong. The GPU overheats. this does two things. It softens the solder and the motherboard. Now the X-xlamp below is putting pressure on teh middle of the board under the GPU chip. This deforms the board and squeezes the center solder connections and stretches the outer solder connections. after this effect is repeated several times the "leadfree" solder eventually makes a bad connection. this results in the infamous 3 ring of light error.

The FIX!
prevention is best.
after the errors anything you do is a bandaid. unless you resolder the GPU chip down.

The BEST fix IMHO is to take the DVD drive out of the case and put a larger heat sink on the GPU.
In all cases you should put a partition inside the fan shroud so that all air from the one fan goes through the GPU heat sink.
If you insist on keeping your DVD inside the case, mod the GPU fan to run at 12v all the time. this is a simple wire soldered on one leg of the drive transistor. I use a resistor to ground.

**kal** · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:58 pm Post subject:

FWIW (and unrelated to the content/performance of the 2 units so don't take this as a bash against the Xbox360):

I've read/heard that the PS3 is an absolutely fantastic piece of engineering from a cooling/build standpoint. The thing dissipates a HUGE amount of heat but still manages to remain quiet (to me).

Here's some pics of the insides: http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-41891-1.html

It uses one massive heatsink/fan combo with heat pipes from the GPU/CPU:

Kal

**kal** · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:13 pm Post subject:

Some more pics of the giant heatsink and fan inside the PS3:

Joust · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:20 pm Post subject:

that looks like it may even fit on the 360 motherboard. Smile

there is a place that sells a watercooling system for the 360. it ain't cheap though.

**kal** · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:26 pm Post subject:

Here's some pics of the Xbox360 cooling system taken from:

http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2348-22_11-5950908-1.html

Xbox360 heatsinks with shrowd to increase airflow (GPU on left, CPU on right):

Xbox360's 3.2GHz CPU heatsink is watercooled:

Xbox360's 500Mhz GPU uses a 'standard' heatsink:

Kal

JustGreg · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 3098 Location: Kenosha, WI

JustGreg · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 3098 Location: Kenosha, WI

Disregard....network lag caused a duplicate.

Thanks for the great pix Kal!

**kal** · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:56 pm Post subject: