First off.. I'm new to the xbox.. but not new in the general sense.

First thing i noticed when I opened up the 360 was the tiny area covered by the exhaust shroud.

Now.. I've been overclocking since overclocking was incepted. So I know heat.

By placing the cpu and gpu next to eachother on the same pcb they were asking for trouble. Cooling them together was a death wish. That area must get WELL over 100 degrees C more than the surrounding board. No wonder xboxes are failing. Traces, pins and solder all have different makeups and thusly expand and contract at different rates. It's not that it's a manufacturing defect.. It's an engineering defect. <<Can't be fixed unless they start using lower power cpu's and gpu's.

And the broken connection is always between the solder and trace, so it's impossible to see.

Heat gun works because it reconnects.. that simple.. but it WILL fail again.

Everybody has bent a piece of metal back and forth till it got easier and easier and then snapped. Thats what's happening to the xboxes.

My advice would be to cut the cover up and give it some real heat sinks with fans or leave it on 24/7 so it can't cycle from hot to cold..

This has prolly been said before.. Just think it's important.

HAHAHAAH thats funny lol soo true but i think u can stop the REal heat on the mother board with artic sliver works likes the balls have had my xbox 360 for about 6 months only had 1 freeze soo im Knocking on wood right now lol

It can be fixed in future models by using chips that don't use as much power and don't produce as much heat. Same thing AMD and Intel are doing now, shrinking the architecture size so that the processors run cooler. Just like my 90nm Athlon 64

Doesn't really help those who own current 360s though, does it?

If your worried about heat and "Now.. I've been overclocking since overclocking was incepted. So I know heat." Why don't you just WATERCOOL the 360? I mean Gooodbye heat issues?

Not so hot now are ya?

Open up an Xbox 1, youl see a similar design but m$ forgot the 360 is in the Ghz and the Xbox 1 was in the Mhz. There is no duct vent on the Xbox 1 but it's a similar design.

I believe the PS3 has a similar layout to the 360 on the mobo CPU & GPU wise but they have one big ass 120MM maybe bigger fan on top of it all exhausting heat at every PS3 vent (and theres lots of vents on the PS3).

Exactly why we are not seeing as many PS3 hardware problems as the 360. Oh and placing the DVD drive directly over the GPU has never been a good idea imho.

No it doesn't, but when the new processors come out it won't be as much of an issue. It's a shame that such a nice system is compromised by the lack of a newer style heat sink. They used old technology heat sinks on new technology chips. The xbox probably would have been better off with copper and heat pipes. I would say speed the fans up, but people already complain about them like you don't need cooling for some reason.


Actually, that similar design is the duct work. The plastic piece the hard drive is attatched to is designed to take air from the bottom vent holes on the front of the console, cool the hard drive, and direct air over the internal psu and the processor/gpu heatsinks.

I do like sony's take on it though. The 120mm fan was a good touch. It's really the only way to cool today's gaming systems without cry babies crying about noise. But you bring along another problem with this. You limit yourself severly on how small you can make the console... which is probably why the ps3 is the biggest thing in gaming i've ever seen.

Next gen is almost guaranteed heat pipes or water cooling. Or a serious improvement on processor/gpu technology.

main reason CPU & GPU are next to each other is faster access on bus...

PS3 indeed have similar design. but their fan and heat sink design...




that shit will cool your room at the same time ( maybe not )