Read before continuing
1. Modify your Xbox at your own risk, I will not be held responsible for any damages.
2. You need to know how to disassemble your xbox 360 and remove the motherboard.
3. You also need basic soldering skills.

First of all I love the tutorials an xbox-scene and used many of them from time to time so I just wanted to give back.

I've searched and couldn't find anyting about the front fan header so here you go, if there is another tut or post then pass on bye.

I'm a cooling nut and can't stand anything but room temp air coming form my 360. Unlike the old 1.0 xbox with it's two fan headers and four pin molex microsoft left us high and dry for adding additional cooling that can be easly unplugged. Yeah I know about the DVD cable adapter and usb but the problem is your stealing power from circuits that need it and might ultimatly damage your box. This mod pulls 12v power directly form the power supply before it passes through any circuits. And this mod is free if you have an old motherboard laying aroung and a soldering iron.

Stuff you need
1. Soldering Iron.
2. Solder
3. Fan header from old motherboard. They can be difficult to remove without melting so you might want to buy one.
4. 3/64 drill bit or a tad smaller but no larger.

Notice the solder in the holes.
Dont bother trying to remove the solder from the side holes because you can't or I couldn't with my $370 hexacon iron.
I don't think they're drilled all the way through.


I used a 3/64 drill bit to get the side holes clean and I think it did a pretty good job.



Here is the point before bridging.
If you want 12v then bridge R7V7
If you want 5v then bridge R7V6
I know for a fact that the 12v is directly from the power supply.
I'll check the 5v on my ginny pig and update in the next few days.
DON'T BRIDGE BOTH.



This is what 12v should look like after soldering.
And no pointing out my bitchen soldering job. I need new tips.



Flip the board back over and it's ready to go.



Here's a 12v 70mm fan working off the header.
My camera didn't catch the fan spinning but you can see the blue LED's.



My sons setup.
Fan doesn't look to shabby.
The new fan blows so much that you can feel cool air coming from cracks all aroung the covers.
I know it needs a grill but 70mm grills are hard to come by unless you want to pay $8 shipping on Ebay. I'll end up converting a 80mm grill later.


Hope this short tutorial helps someone.


Now I just need to find another 70mm blue LED fan for my 360.

Darn spoiled kid.

uh-oh.. drilling on a mobo? hehe, just be careful if you do that.

The reason the solder is so hard to get out there (I'm 99% sure they are drilled all the way through) is that they connect to huuuuge groundplanes. So its close to impossible to heat the solder up enough because all that copper arround it acts as a big heat sink.

/pablot

Thats pretty cool, thanks for taking the time to make this. I'm sure a mod will see this and add it to the tutorials topic.

BTW; great way to get started on the scene! Thanks!

Added to Tutorials located here. Under cooling mods.

kick azz! too bad im to scared to drill into my mobo, but great tut!

Ditto on all accounts.

I didn't actualy use a drill gun but put the bit in my drill press and raised the board by hand.

Good tut, but I wouldn't reccomend drilling the board, you can remove the solder with a hot iron and some desoldering braid.

Another cool thing to do is place a resistor on R7V6 (5v) instead of bridging it, then you have a nifty source to run LEDs from

I used my hexacon iron @ 850F with and without braid with no luck, I should have used my plasma torch LOL. I have drilled two boards with no problems so far. You could twist the bit between your fingers but it might take a good 30 minutes or so. Good point on the restistor.

I've seen that pinout point since I got my launch console and I've heard so many people talk about it being a 3 pin connector spot but I've never actually seen anyone put one in yet untill now. So now we know it actually works

I think I've found an easier way!! I'm going to test it tonight. If my idea works, there will be no drilling necessary. If you look at the front and back side of the board, the solder is on both sides. Meaning the holes are drilled all the way through. All you need is a few standard paperclips, needlenose pliers and a lighter. Straiten a paperclip and hold it in the needlenose pliers and heat it with the lighter. When you feel it might be hot enough, push the paperclip through the hole. Hopefully you won't have any trouble. Repeat for the other two holes, bridge for either 12 or 5v and you should be all set.

I was ready to do this thismorning before work, but do you think I could find a lighter?? I live in a house full of smokers, but not ONE FREAKING LIGHTER!!!

Huh?

Id get it lol if u try it i want pics and A HUGE DETAILED tut please! lol

I will make a tut, but the credit will still go to rgall0.

Where can i get a a fan header?

THanks rgall0. This works like a charm. I didn't use a paperclip and heat. The solder is too thick. Instead I used a very small precision screwdriver. It is very easy to do. Give it a shot.

You know you guys are ruining this for me right? I wanna play my 360 so bad but yet I wanna take it apart and do this mod...ugh

LOL! Trust me, its worth it, this only took me 10 minutes.

I just used a map gas torch and a piece of .30 mig welding wire glowing red hot to try and melt through and nothing. I think they put a plate of titanium in there

The jewlers screwdriver is a good idea for those that faint at the thouht of drilling a hole into an expensive 360 motherboard.

It is a pretty fast mod considering it takes longer just to take the 3 dozen screws out to remove the board

Here's a better close up picture of the header

I was bored and was playing with my macro lense

What do you mean by bridging?

Can i get a little bit more detailed on the wiring part? thanks

He means "connect" . You are creating a "bridge" for the electricity to travel on. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think thats the simplest explanation possible.

O'Malley

Alright i just did this and it seriously only took about 5-10 min. If you are semi-decent at soldering then do this for sure. Great work there rgallo.

Im still confused about this.. and how it works i dnt get it how do u solder int he holes? lol idk



Like instead of adding the fan header could i just stick a pos and a neg down the 2 holes and solder them and be done?

Ok first get a fan header, clear the holes, put the fean header down into the holes and make sure all 3 pins fit nicely, flip the board over and solder all the pins to the board, flip the board over once more and plug in your fan or accesory item. It is that easy.

I wouldnt recommend just sitting a wire down in the whole and soldering, it much easier and safer to use the header.

I love this tut!
i will use this for sure when i get to mod my 360!

Anyone know where i can buy a fan header for cheap?

Here is a y splitter.

http://www.svc.com/3pinyadapter.html

Desolder one of the headers, cut the excess wire and your left with a short extension cable to use for the mod.

Better order more to make it worth the shipping.

or desolder them off old mobos =p


a seperate question tho...

can i rig mor than one fan to pin header? like...3 (2 ledfans and a 50mm fan for the cpu)? just solder all the (appropriate) wires together... if not i'll have to look into the other sources of 12v, because with that little 50mm so loud, mine as well make the rest louder =p

Like I said in the tut you can take the fan header from an old Mobo. The 12v from the fan header is drawn directly from the PSU plug so you should be able to put several fans on that header with no problem. If you do have any problems then unplug a few of them and it should be OK.

I have to admit I did this merely based on the assumption there was gonna be some huge issue of clearing out the holes for the header (I like a respectable challenge). I didn't have a problem at all with removing the solder from them, in fact it came out eaiser than most regular holes filled do. Maybe I've just been (de)soldering that long, but I didn't find it quite the ordeal to clear them out as I'd figured. This solder does about suck something awful though and I figured I'd share my experience installing one. I robbed this fan header from a poor v1.6 XBOX board that was just lying around, guess it was good for something.










I must also point out (as G0t Mx4xx 21 did) that drilling on a PCB is not recommended, however in this case the most harm it could really do is lift the center trace, but it's not a good thing to get in the habit of doing if you can't remove the solder. Lots of boards, if not all by now, now are multilayered and if you happened across one and drilled the eyelet out, you could be in a right mess. I've had to take a small drill bit to several different boards as well in the past, sometimes it's whatcha gotta do, just do it carefully.

If ya run across one ya can't get cleared out try this first...

Set the temp on the soldering iron up, I did this around 800F for the 2 ground spots, but I'm pretty sure they'd have given it up sooner than that. If your iron is not adjustable in any way you may have to get a "bigger boat" as it were, depending on the irons wattage and what shape the tip is in. Heating up ground planes takes a lot of, well, heat.

Once ya have the soldering iron going good, put a LITTLE more solder (yes more, and just a touch of it) onto the hole you're trying to clear. Then hold the iron on the spot for a few seconds at least. The fresh solder and flux therin helps transfer heat faster and most of the time will get it all good and melted to the point a solder sucker or solder braid can easily remove it.

The same can be used for removing parts that are soldered to big ground planes on whatever. It's just one of those cases where a little more solder goes a long way.

is that a resistor you bridged it with, on both sides?

Resisitor on the bottom, Capacitor on the top. The Capacitor is not really needed at all, but I was in a SMT mood and threw one on there anyway. Those parts were pilfered from the old v1.6 board as well.

That looks real good too

Ok, I saw this tutorial and I am planning to do it. I using an external power though, for now. I made a ac adapter type thing that can run the fan. Might have to get power directly from mobo later on though. Anyways my question is which way do you position the fan. Did you position so air blows inside or position so air blows outside...and sucking hot air from the inside. If you are blowing air in, would that collect a lot of dust? I did that to one of my pc and it has a load of dust.

I have my fan blowing in but I don't live in a very dusty area so it doesn't collect to much dust at all.

When I read this I was all like "ooh I've gotta check this out, so I went over to my open box and checked it out. I already had holes there (?), so no need for me to drill!

Whoever have done this mod, let me know about the performance and while this fan work: EVERCOOL AL7015 70mm Ball Aluminum.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16835119029

If it doesn't what fan will with best air flow. I tried test fitting a 80mm fan but it's to big.

how's this for a fan grill?

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ind...b5c13a3ef2fd45a

*edit

also found this one

http://coolerstar.com/70mmfangrill.html

Ok stupid question. Do I need to use a resister or capacitor when doing this mod. Is it safe to just bridge the 12v solder points and go?

You don't need to use either, you can just bridge the 5v or 12v spot, install the header and you're good to go.

RDC is just kinda crazy, installing resistors and capacitors where they don't belong...

The Sinister controller I'm doing is probably a tad on the crazy side, installing surface mount parts is just a little tedious and can be a right pain sometimes. I was just in a mood to do some SMT work when I was messing with the fan header mod. Most people would prefer to avoid that stuff like the plague if they can, but ya gotta practice to get any better at it.

SMT?

I'm going to try this mod as soon as my stuff gets here, anyways too those that have done this mod have you had any problems with it. Like not having enough power, red light that everyone always talk about?

Thanks man.

To those that did this mod, did you guys do the thermal paste upgrade mod too. I want to upgrade the thermal paste while I'm doing this mod but don't know if it's worth the risk. I heard removing the heatsinks were a pain. I have a xbox360 model made in march and I don't really know if upgrading the thermal paste is neccessary(lol, I don't know what I am talking about). Would you guys think this mod and the whisper fans be good enough? Anyways thanks for posting such a great tutorial can't wait to do this tuturial when my fan and 3pin thing gets here.

Anyone?

To any one the people who has done this mod, as of today does your xbox360 still work?

I always replace stock thermal compond on everything. Manufactures try to build everything as cheap as possible and that means cheap thermal compond. I've competely dissasebled about 10 box 360's and found that the best way to remove the heatsink clips is to use a small but strong flathead screwdriver and put it in the tiny gap betwen the peg and end of clip then carfully pry towards the center of the clip and it shoud pop that leg up or off the grove so you can pull it up by hand. Using that method I can remove both heatsinks in about 1 to 2 minutes.

So this mod isn't going disrupt the xbox360's power current and cause it to not function right, right?