I am trying to build a cold but loud Xbox for a warm environment. Thanks to JTAG and the a the ability to install games to my newly installed 640G original drive replacement I can finally do what my wife has been dreaming of. I have a hall closet in-between our living room and bedroom. My hope is to hook up the XBox in there and split the video cable to go to the LCD TV in the bedroom and the Plasma TV in the living room. There are 2 problems with the idea. The biggest concern is the closet can get warm. It is a large closet (about 3'x10'x7') and it houses the furnace that goes from top to bottom of the closest on one end, about 2' deep. So while the furnace pumps the heat up and out to the house the closet can still get warm. On the other side of the closet are shelves housing a HTPC, router, switch and cable modem. All that equipment has been running for years without and noticeable problems other that the Shuttle HTPC running a bit loud at times, but is it like 5 years old so this is normal (and replacement fans are hard to find).

So here was my plan. I plan on removing the DVD by jumpering it like in this post.

Removed Dvd Drive, What Heat Sink To Purchase

Installing this fan

Newegg

Now this is a big fan 120x120x38mm. It is almost as wide and deep as the DVD drive and only a few inches shorter. The upside is that it will be pushing 133.60 CFM of air, but sadly is 45.90 dBA loud. I will dramel out a hole in the size of the blades (no need to put on a grill as it will be on the top shelf of a closet to increase controller range) and mount it to the top of the case.

I will be powering it with this.

Add Front Fan Header To 360 Motherboard

I already have a header (came with a splitter) and I already have the fan (bought it in the hopes to replace a power supply fan but it was to thick).

This will be pulling hot air directly off the GPU heat-sink and hopefully the CPU heat-sink.

I was also considering adding the "Complete Hybrid Advanced Kit(ALL + Thermal paste)" clamps kit since it appears to be the best I can find. I might also replace my CPU and GPU heat-sink with the newer one that has a heat-pipe.

These are my questions.

Is this my best option for a cheap mod (will cost me lest than $20) that will cool it to the level I will need it to avoid a RROD?

When cutting the hole in the top should I remove the metal sheeting completely or just cut through it? How important is that metal shielding?

When hooking up to the 12v spot in the front of the allow the XBox to control the fan speed, or will it run at 100% all the time?

What is the range of the controllers, and how well does it go though walls?

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

a couple things. you will want the fan blowing onto the cpu, gpu and might want to replace the gpu heatsink with a cpu one(cheap on ebay) an the controllers go through walls fine and have a good 30 foot distance. my buddys smokes in his garage and the signal goes through 2 walls that are 100 years old and have like a inch of plaster

Well the problem with replacing the GPU heatsink with one like the CPU is that it is to tall, the fan is almost as big and the DVD drive so it would not fit if the GPU heatsink was any taller. As for the blowing air instead of sucking air out, the air outside is coming from a warm room that also gets dusty, so the air it would be pushing in would be warm. So I though with the fact that heat already rises, using the large fan to pull out all that hot air and allowing the fans in the back to pull air in would work better, or am I mistaken?

that would be fine except you would have to put the stock fan in reverse and 12v mod it so it can pump enough air in. you can always mount the fan on the outside of the case as i dont think ur 2 worried about looks that way you can use 2 cpu heatsinks. if the room is so dusty you should buy some sort of thin (1/4 inch) spongy filter to cover the fan.

I guess I could try both ways, inside blowing, inside sucking and then moving it outside if it is not keeping it cool enough.

Should I completely remove the top metal sheeting or just cut out just enough for the fan? How needed is that shielding?

Will hooking the big fan into the 12v fan spot in the front where you can add a header allow it to run like the other fans? In other words will fan speed control work, speeding the fan up when the system starts to get hot?

Is the clamp replacement mod that I found the best one? It is this one Xbox-experts.com - Shop - XS Filter - 043008s.com Official Store.

water cool it! then you dont even have to worry about cooling really. you could just leave it on 24/7 like i do.

I would LOVE to water cool it, but at this time I can't drop a few hundred dollars into this project.

Okay, I got my Complete Hybrid Advanced Kit in a few days ago and I ordered 2 x 2nd Gen CPU heat-sinks. I ordered 4 memory heat-sinks. I also have a few heat-pads for things like the south-bridge.

After lots of reading I can see that for best cooling you want to pull outside air from the front or top and push it toward the matching CPU and GPU heat-sinks. If pulling the air from the top you should channel the air toward the heat-sinks with ducks like the ones in the back that pushes the hot air out.

So having the extra space provided by the removal of the DVD drive does no good other than allowing you more space for the GPU heat-sink. Maybe one day that space can be used for a second SATA device so you could put another HDD in there and the replacement dashboard would see it as a 2nd SATA HDD drive instead of a DVD drive, but that is way in the future.

Oh, removing the DVD drive also adds a huge hole in front of the machine that is not only unattractive but gives the airflow another place to go instead of where it should go, over the heat-sinks and out of the machine. I also recall glancing over someone saying that removing the DVD causes extra flexing to the board with the screw guild and spacers being removed with it.

Well I really wanted to put the fans I already had inside the machine to save some money.

I have 2 of these 80mm fans and 1 of these 120mm fans.

The 80mm fans are pretty quiet at 14dBA but the airflow is only 24CFM and the size is 80 x 80 x 25mm which is to big to fit even 1 inside other than possibly off in a corner where the DVD drive was, but the ducking system would be really tight there and would not work all that well.

The 120mm fan are pretty noisy at 45.90dBA but the airflow is a nice 133.60CFM and sadly the size is 120 x 120 x 38mm which is way to big to fit anywhere.

I would really hate to have to move the fans outside. Unless I could do something like use Bondo or something along those lines around the fans so they look like part of the XBox instead of just a few fans screwed to the top of the machine.

Any advice on what I should do about fans. Large fan on the outside, 2 smaller fans on the outside or some kinda fan that will fit inside and yet is still powerful enough to keep the machine nice and cold?

Also what is the best thing to fill the hole left by the missing DVD drive. I have Bondo and fiberglass equipment, but I have never fiber-glassed before.

Looks are not as important as cooling and RROD protection. That can always come later after I get the XBox back from the wife when she is done playing.