Hello everyone. I own the old Xbox 360 (Xenon motherboard) that has reportedly 3RL due to the GPU's bga issue, aggravated by excessive heating, present in these models.

I actually bought this recently from an college classmate, already with 3RL, he didn't wanted to fix it anymore so I offered him to buy it and he accepted.

With the heat gun, great care and patience, I fixed it. To avoid 3RL's again, I put in the coolers 12v, linked directly to the power supply and did the X-Clamp mod. So it's working almost two months without problems.

But as the problem is compounded by lack of GPU cooling, ThermaRright has released a heatsink specially for the Xbox 360. As soon as I saw it on the internet I decided i needed one. It's the TR-360 and it comes with the thermal grease "The Chill Factor 2, the amount of 4g.

This heat sink is available in nickel model (which I got and is this topic is about) and cooper model. I opted for nickel because although it does not conduct heat as well as copper, it does not lose performance, what happens to the copper over time, and don't get spotted, such as copper. This heatsink features four heatpipes. These heatpipes are placed around the CPU heatsink, so there's no need for any workaround to make holes to install extra coolers.

From what I learned until now, the Xbox 360 only reads the CPU temperature to control the coolers, CPU cold results in slow coolers, hot CPU results in fast coolers.
Since this heatsink removes much more heat than the original, it's position makes the heat spreaded to be sucked into the CPU heatsink, which increases (slightly) its temperature, causing the coolers spin faster, increasing the airflow, cooling it even more.

When I installed the TR-360, I decided to leave the coolers to be controlled by the console, so they run based on the CPU's temperature, increasing the speed automatically.

I do not have equipment to make temperature's measurements, but I can guarantee that the air expelled is warmer than before, so I left the coolers in default and undid the 12v mod, as I think it is unnecessary.

Below is some photos and a little description about the it's installation.


Photo 1 - Well, in this photo, you can see the box, it is fairly large, more or less the size of a shoe box;


Photo 2 - Here is inside the box, it perfectly acomodade the heatsink, next to a little box with the thermal grease. It does not feature any kind of instruction manual, but it is available on the manufacturer's website;


Photo 3 - Next to the product has an sticker, I pasted in the corner of the console top cover;


Photo 4 - This is a closeup of the underside of the heatsink. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures when I removed the protective sticker, but the base is 100% mirrored, very well polished. Here you can see the 4 heatpipes coming out of the base.


Photo 5 - In this photo you see how it is underneath;


Photo 6 - Here begins the photos of the installation. On my Xbox, which is very very old, the first version, it has a capacitor that blocks the installation due a heatpipe. Pushing it aside would be enough to install, but I did not want risk damaging the heatpipe or the capacitor, so moved the cap, as can be seen in the photo below;


Photo 7 - Capacitor moved;


Photo 8 - In this photo you can see the heatsink installed. It does not cover the memory, so it is possible to install memory heatsinks, but for me it seems unnecessary. The best thing of this heatsink is that it does not disturb any of the other console's components. I've seen hacks where big CPU heatsink where installed on the GPU and they need to move the DVD out of the console. With this, it is not necessary;


Photo 9 - Now, the motherboard is back to the console's case, everything fits perfectly. Note here note two heatpipes will be out of the air duct and two within the same (among them the largest);


Photo 10 - I had a little difficulty placing the air duct because it won't fit. I took a closer look and noticed that one of the heatpipes (can be seen in photo 11) prevented the placement, to solve the problem, I pushed it a little backwards (bend a little, but did not damage anything) and it finally fitted;


Continue...



Photo 11 - Heatpipe that prevented the installation of the air duct. If the barrel were shorter in the end, this problem would not have occurred;


Photo 12 - Heatpipe slightly warped;


Photo 13 - Console with the air duct. I had the feeling that it did not fit as it should, due to a heatpipe still touching him. I pressed down a bit, which has to feel a backlash, and saw no problem in leaving it this way;


Photo 14 - Another angle of the photo 13;


Photo 15 - Console complete, ready to close. Everything fits perfectly

Conclusion:

I felt a very good quality in this heatsink. As I noted earlier, even with the lack of measuring equipment, which would further enrich this review, I must emphasize that the air leaving the console is warmer than before, that means more heat is removed from the GPU.

And it's pretty obvious the fact that this sink has the ability to remove much more heat than the originally installed on the GPU, just look to it.
I believe I'll never have problems with 3RL again, and I commend those who have the consoles successors problem, that if you are willing to spend money, investing in this heatsink will keep the original appearance of your Xbox and will effectively remove more heat than extra GPU coolers, keeping 3rl far away from your Xbox 360.

Sorry if the text is a little hard to be read, I'm Brazilian, so I hope you got the point.

Just want to point out that its the solder under the chip that causes the error and not the heat. Because your xbox has been fixed with the x clamp fix and not been repaired by being reflowed or reballed that you can be expecting the rrod again, I just can't say when. Better cooling in your xbox is more rrod prevention, but if you are having to 12volt your fans to keep your xbox running for example maybe it runs for five minutes and then freezes but runs for hours with 12 volt isn't a repair its a fix. I would suggest even though your console is working fine now send it for a reflow and 12 volt the gpu fan which always runs and 5 volts if you really want to avoid the red ring.

Well, I hope my fix doesn't need to be re-fixed any time soon. This Xbox ran from 2006 to 2010 without RRoD and without any modification. After I bought it and clamp moded it, the RRoD didn't came back, THEN I decided to do the 12v mod, just to make sure it would not annoy me again.

That's why I went back for the stock cooling system after the new heatsink, 12v isn't necessary anymore.

You need to do a reflow also and add a fan in front of the cpu because that heatsink raised the cpu heat by 10oc which is bad.

Contrary to popular belief it is a combination of bad solder and over heating that causes rrod and e74. I have gotten rrod during the middle of a game which shows a problem with the stock cooling hardware rather than the cool down process which some believe warps the motherboard. If extreme temperatures are never reached you will not have a problem with the solder disconnecting. So theoretically if you get the operating temperatures low enough you will never have problems with the rrod or e74. I would not be surprised if this does work; however, I would switch back to the 12v fan. There is no such thing as unnecessary when dealing with a 360's cooling system or lack their of.

I agree with you, but, i went back to stock cooling because this heatsink makes the CPU a bit hotter, which triggers the coolers to spin faster than with the stock GPU heatsing. In normal use, playing GTA 4 from the hard drive, the coolers spin at almost full speed, and running in idle it is quieter, since it doesnt heat so much. So, i judge as unnecessary the 12v mod with this new GPU heatsink. Until now it is running great.

Keep us updated every few months and let us know if you have any problems. I know a lot of us are anxious to see if this will permanently work! You may want to think about sealing the exhaust fan shroud since it doesn't really fit well anymore. You could cover the gap between the shroud and the heat sinks with foil to help direct the airflow.

OK. I'll leave it the way it is, I don't think it's a big deal the gaps that the shroud have. The top cover of the console stays very cool while playing, so, the heat is being removed successfully. I'll try to update it every month.

Yea I know for a fact the main issue behind all the GPU problems are caused by heat. I had a buddy that resoldered his GPU with lead based solder (much higher melting point than the solder microsoft originally used) and six months later he still got e74. So if this heat sink doesn't work I am going to fabricate something with liquid cooling.

From what i know, the E74 is caused by the ANA or HANA, whatever it is called, but is that chip, not the GPU.

That the excessive heat is the cause of all BGA issues, is a fact, just look at those tons of HP laptops with nvidia gpus that had issues with BGA because of poor heat dissipation. And is not surprising that Xbox had those GPU issues with that tiny heatsink.

Exactly, if you look at pc counterparts with the same high level gpu the heat sinks are twice the size and usually have a fan built directly on them. Not really sure what MS engineers were thinking when they put such a small heat sink on a gaming system gpu. It was doomed to fail from the start.

Then why doesn't the CPU fail? same solder, same package method, same x-clamps. It's known what the issue is, expansion and contraction of materials from changes in heat which can lead to fracturing of the solder joints. The higher the temps, the bigger the expansion.

A smaller heatsink means those expansion changes will be more rapid.

Há! Different heatsink. The CPU's heatsink, I believe, can remove at least 4 times as much heat as the stock GPU heatsink.

Good point tk saturn I have been trying to tell people that all along.

I've had this heatsink in my JTAGed jasper since mid-January. It never RRed or overheated prior to putting in the new HS. I did it more as a preventative measure and cause I sold off the XDK it was supposed to go into. I took mental note of the temps for 1 week prior to installation and every moment since, using the temp monintor built into FSD.

Another note is that I did this in conjunction with removal of the inner metal grill, so that also affected temp readings. I also reused the x-clamp from the original GPU, using some old MX TIM on that and the CPU was only shrouded, using original xclamps and TIM.

GPU dropped 10~15C and CPU dropped ~5C. Fans are set to auto and unless my house gets over 75F neither temp goes above 60~62C, no matter how much I play and check. Now there is of course a drastic drop in temps once the load has been removed from the time it takes to quit a game and load FSD, but the fans never 'spin-up' and are always just barely blowing while in-game.

If I put the fans at 100%, temps drop dramatically into the 30~40C range.

On the note of installation, this was a 'nightmare' installing, taking the case on and off 10+ times. The curve of the shroud pushes the set of fins directly in front of the fans (SF1) into the fans. After bending and adjusting the pipe leading to SF1 a dozen different times and not getting it to work, I figured out the key. You must break the tab on the shroud that pulls it into being flush with the fans. Keep in mind, I could bend the pipe so that SF1 didn't go into the fans with the shroud unaltered but as soon as the case was back on, it would be grinding again.

Overall, if you want to put the time into it, it's well worth it. Analyze it all you want over the Internet, but the real-world results are real. I don't have anything to gain from this, just figured I'd let everyone know, since not many people have one.

Good post, I supected this would def lower temp readings since it disperses heat over more than just one or two locations.

Well, today, my Xbox did the revenge. The RRoD is back. This deeply hurt my feelings this afternoon. I decided to give up on this, sell it and, maybe, buy the slim model. I tried reflowing it with my heatgun, and with TR-360 it insisted in red ringing after some seconds of playing. I decided then to try the stock heatsink, since it was working basicaly for 2 months after the last RRoD, and then boom, it worked just fine.

I stopped to think, why is this shit returning with TR-360?

After a while I realised that (remember, I use de X-clamp mod) the TR-360 doesn't make as much pressure on the GPU as the stock heatsink, thus, making RRoD room to come back.

The stock heatsink I'm using is a newer model with a heatpipe, where I installed the power supply cooler (remeber I bought this xbox from my classmate? So, he managed burn out the power supply, which had a small cooler).

Here is a pic:

This might sound really ghetto but it has worked for me as far as keeping away rrod. I have the same elite heat sink as you do. X-clamps are gone, cpu and gpu have new thermal paste. I have been running with no cover for about a year. I have a small desktop fan blowing down on the system every time it is on. This has kept rrod away for over a year. Like I said I know it is ghetto with the fan but it works. I figured why give microsoft more money when they should have done a recall for this crap.

Your Xbox already RRoD sometime? My already did way before the TR-360. As i proved, it is not a RRoD fix, but, I'm sure for those who never got it, and have systems that may have RRoD, it is a great way to prevent it.

Yea the fan blowing down on mine prevents everything from overheating.

i had a stint of fixing about 10 rrod xenons maybe 6 months ago. i used a heatgun, fan shroud mod, xclamp replacement, cut out the vent mesh, fit 12v sharkoon silent eagle 120mm fan over cpu/gpu area. of those, only one has survived! it gets regular use (i have an upstairs box and a downstairs box) and the gpu temp is about 36°c idle. for this box i bought an updated heatsink from ebay (from the more recent models) - probably worth it. also it is a jtag and has the dvd drive removed. this makes a lot more room for air circulation around the GPU.

I have another jtag which i did all the same to, but fitted a cpu heatsink on the gpu and extended the fan shroud with card and tape. this went well until recently when it rrod'd again as a last ditch attempt, i have reflowed, fitted dual 120mm fans and removed the split down the fan shroud so that it shares the output of the cpu/gpu rather than splitting it.



the gpu idles at 34°c on this one. one thing id strongly recommend if you have a jtag, is to reduce the fan thresholds so that the rear fans ramp up as it gets hotter in there. they do this already, but not til it gets really hot! (gpu - 97°c on some xenons!). thread about this here: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=713933 i have settled on the settings 070°C;060°C;065°C - 085°C;075°C;080°C for my xenons.

i'd say, unless you really love that console (i count jtags as fairly precious), just keep it as a spare. its hard to fix a rrod console and not have it rear its ugly head again!

That is true, i had owned a hp dv series laptop and had the same issue, Warranty covered it though . . .
purchased one of these Thermalright TR-360 heatsinks from purecool pc base in the uk.
I "Should" have it tomorow or wednesday.
If you guys would like i shall add to the feedback on this kit.

A note to the op:

Whilst reading you 1st post you stated you had done the X-clamp fix, How did you get the heatsink to fit with the bolts?

kind of old thread.. but i found this product online and its nice to see it installed.

i assume you can remove the bolts and do the xclamp mod to the tr-360 as well? gaining more pressure on the heatsink.

after a third rrod i added the newer gpu heat sink to my jtag and put a 80mm fan attatched to the case directly over the heatpipe grill/cpu heat sink... seems to work fine for now. next will be removing the dvd-drive maybe trying my corsaid water cooler on the gpu!

I recently got the clear ghost case kit, and the tr-360. I also got some small heatsinks and a couple copper shims. Copper is very thermal conductive. I put 2 copper shims on the back memory chips where the heat pipes from the tr-360 blocked which helped cool them down a lot. They get so hot they could burn flesh. If you didn't already know this... All 4 memory chips get hot. On older boards there are another 4 chips that get crazy hot too which U need to do something about. Luckly I got a new Flacon board that didn't have those memory chips on the back side. I used Akaska thermal adhesive tape from Frozencpu.com. I put it on all 4 gpu memory chips and placed 2 shims on the back and I put 2 heat sinks on the ones on the side. I also put a shim on the HANA chip. I placed heatsinks on the Southbrdige, On-board memory chip to the left of the gpu memory with heatsinks. I got the Tailsmoon whisper and I have the console set to stock fan control and it's completely silent. Only thing u can hear is the dvd drive. I tested it for like 24 hours and the only thing that got pretty damn hot was those memory chips covered by the heat pipes on the back. However they were at least 20C cooler than without the Akaska thermal interface bonding the chip to the highly conductive copper shims. The memory to the side with the heatsinks were 20C cooler than the ones on the back however they are probably 40-60C cooler with the heatsinks. Before U could seriously sizzle your flesh on those memory chips. Now all 4 u can see stay acceptably cool. Overall my cpu and gpu run so cold all the time and the fan barely ever bumps up. There's seriously no need. Overall I think my xbox 360 should last for years and years to come hopefully.

One thing to note is if your heatsink for the cpu looks like the one is post 1, it's the 90nm cpu which runs crazy hot with that tiny heatsink. Get the falcon cpu heatsink. Even know the falcon has a 65nm cpu, the cooler keeps the 90nm cpu's way way cooler with that larger heatsink. Make sure u get like some "Extreme goo gone" to get all the old paste off both chips. Then preferably use a none electrically conductive paste like Arctic Silver Ceramique 2. It works amazing. Also there is no need for air ducts etc to keep it cool. The air tunnel alone does all the work and it's designed perfectly to cool the system with the TR-360 installed. I'm so so happy with mine. Also I had no need to remove or modify anything. Just bend the heatsinks and pipes so everything fits. 1-2mm will no hurt anything on the TR-360. Whatever u do it's recommended never to remove caps from the board with modding or RROD may occur. I killed my last xbox with a persistent Error 0021 which was a Zephyr system with the small cpu heatsink and the 90nm cpu. Those 90nm CPU's may even getting hotter than the gpu, seriously. Need to upgrade the old cpu heatsink. If you have the 90nm cpu even with the upgraded tailsmoon fan and upgraded heatsink. You may need to 9v atleast if not 12v to stay cool. The falcon systems 65nm cpu runs very very cool. After hours and hours. Cold to the touch. Gpu stay cold to the touch as well not hot at all.




the tr-360 comes by stock with the pegs for x-clamps so pick up some x-clamps. I paid $46 shipped on ebay for my tr-360. I would make sure u replace the old cpu heatsink with the falcon heatsink and add thermal tape and pennies on the back memory and 3m double sided tape to let the heat transfer to the case of the 360 to cool those chips off. Make sure to either put some 3m double sided tape on the memory under the gpu heatsink to allow that heat to transfer to the heatsink and keep them cool. Then add thermal tape and pre-80' pennies made of copper on those 2 memory chips on the back by the heat pipe. Then ur gonna need to 12v the fan and there's no way around it on the 90nm cpu/ gpu xbox's. Your going to red ring if you don't do that. Put double sided 3m tape and old pure copper pennies on the HANA chip, southbridge, and on-board memory chip on the left of the board close to the gpu memory under the gpu heatsink.

later

If you want info about the TR-360 pls PM GSCOMPS as his shop designed and financed the project, they were essentially rippped off by the manufacturer so I would as XS members not to buy any at the current time (apparently they're not being sold because of an injunction or some such) We developed the original temperature plugin for dash-launch for testing of the TR-360, and I can tell you there is a lot to it, which is why we were asked to make an instructional video for Utube, to show how to do it professionally, after speaking to GScomps last we had this put this on hold. If anyone already has one and needs it installed pls PM us. I would recommend not doing it yourself as it involves a lot of stuff the average DIY Joe, won't know. We spent a great deal of time testing and installing many of these on all Phat's and I can tell you it's easy to cause more issues than it solves. It's a great product when done properly but like I said there are many considerations. PM me if ur outside Australia and have to install one or more (or wait to we get the word to release the vid) If you live in Australia and mention XS we will do it properly for you at a very modest price, and we will give you a discount for mentioning XS on reflow if needed on our already modest price. We don't need the work, but we would like to see this product maintain a good rep (instead of being synonymous with the inevitable RROD's down the track form un-advised installations being blamed on the product)

Brgds/Dan

EDIT: BTW If you are using any sort of 'RROD fix kits' then you should really consult a pro,as X clamps have a good reason for being part of the 360 design, If you attempt one of these so-called 'fixes' then we now have to charge a little extra for undoing the damage (assuming it can be) Without going into great detail here as to why they a bad idea.

Could you elaborate about what exactly you do differently that the average DIYer?

I used the hybrid extreme uniclamp kit, very pleased with it. Just like the TR-360, I got it because the design is solid and the idea makes sense to me. Combined they have served my needs in keeping my JTAG jasper cool, which was 'pre-fixed'.

This is mine without the clear duct but as you can see the heatsinks are on all chips. Before the memory chips in the back where the heatpipes block they ran extremely hot to the point it would sizzle your with. The 2 memory memory chips on the left as well ran stupid hot. When I mean hot I mean hot as hell! After using Akaska thermal interface adhesive material all the memory stay very cool as well as all the other chips in there as well. Pretty much every chip runs crazy hot. Installing the heatsinks made a world of difference with the akaska thermal interface adhesive material on each chip for maximum heat transfer. I use Arctic Silver Ceramique 2 on the cpu and gpu and they run very very cool. The good thing about my xbox 360's board is it's the latest revision of the 65nm jasper so there are no memory chips on the other side of the board. Those by the way get out of this world hot. I'd say at least 95*C in game with the basic thermal pads that are worthless. You can keep them cool by allowing the heat to transfer using 1/4" copper shims with akaska thermal interface material allowing the heat to transfer.

Theres only one thing that bugs me about this heatsink,...the sink that bolts on to the motherboard has the cooling fins running in the wrong direction.
I'm willing to bet that if they ran in the same direction as the original, it would run a couple degrees cooler.

Just my 2 cents

Some of you may or may not remember, but I co developed this heatsink with Thermalright. It started when last august I contacted them about a very early model they did that covered both the cpu and GPU but they claimed it was a complete failure.

So what I did was I asked them to not worry about cooling the CPU but to rotate all the pipes 90 degrees, and send two to the front and hide two in the back. Thats why the pipes work but the fins are in a stupidly awkward direction. I asked about fixing the direction of the fins but they wanted $5,000 up front to purchase a machine to print them out. I told them I wanted to see how it worked with the fins in that direction and it did better than I had hoped. They made me pay full price for each version of the unit we developed but each one was a little better than the last.

I knew about the incompatibilities but I had the original plan laid out for the jasper motherboard, I would have redirected the pipes once I knew it worked but never got that far due to Thermalright not cooperating.

Back on track, to wrap up what happened, Thermal Right screwed us/me over and I stopped helping them with the project because they were being greedy turds about the whole project. Im kind of glad it has as many problems as it does. They even refused to give any credit for helping them with it.

If any of you are curious, there were plans for a TR-360 heatsink for the Slim but I never gave them to ThermalRight. If any of you doubt what I am saying, some of my old posts may still be in the Buy sell trade about the TR-360 and a few of the prototypes I sold there.

My words of advice to you are the TR-360 works best with either fans on full blast with an extended fan shroud or with the DVD drive moved and an 80mm fan placed over the base of the TR-360.


Also, Sorry for any unclear rambling, the TR-360 really bothers me when I see it.









(Thermalright and I never wrote out a contract but they said they would supply me with %5 of any TR-360 that sold.)

@ GSCOMPS

Funny you should mention taking out the dvd drive and putting an 80mm fan on the base,....I was already thinking the same thing,...but if one had to go that far, one might as well just put a cpu heatsink on it, modify the shroud, and be done with it.

With the exception of the base cooling fins, your design is perfect imo.

Thats too bad that they screwed you over,....if it helps, I'll never buy a single Thermalright product ever!

Cheers!

The TR-360 with a fan over the heatsink base is the best method for a quiet console, otherwise yeah you could just slap a modified shroud over two CPU heatsinks and turn up the fans to get similar results. Trust me I spent the last two years testing all the various methods. Eventualy I made an arcade cabinet with Trinity mobo and a Big Typhoon CPU cooler with a custom bracket. It runs at 27c idle and 32C under load. Also its extremely quiet. for just one 120mm fan, even when its unplugged the unit gets up to about 80C after a couple hours but it climbs very slowly. Gotta love that copper for cooling.

Wow. I'm glad that I read this before buying the TR-360.