Been coming on XS lately and notice more and more people doing repairs. That is great and most of you do research, but a lot of info on the net is false or incorrect so i want to provide some useful CORRECT info.

The GPU is a BGA chip which is surface mounted meaning you cannot remove it. In PCs you can remove the CPU because it is socket based.

Lets start with bolt mods or x clamp fixes:

It involves screws, nuts and washers usually 5mm size. The washers are meant to keep the GPU tight to the board since the solder has gotten weak.The washers are usually a mm thick which is fine for the intended usage of them for hardware where exact thickness is not too important. Using them on electronics however they need to be perfect and 99% of the time the washer will be .99 mm thick or maybe 1.02mm thick thus you either have to much or too little pressure on the GPU.

The reason why RROD happens:

The LF solder gets cracked over time due to heat and cooling. The more you turn your system on and off the more chance of RROD. If you left your system on 24/7 it would probably not get RROD ever this is because when you turn it on and off the solder expands and contracts over and over and eventually cracks.

HP DV6000 series is the most common problematic laptop out there, they suffer from the RROD except its not called that. There is no picture but the laptop boots fine, external monitor does not work because the laptop is fine its the GPU thats the issue.

Flat panel TVs use BGAs which are surface mounted which is why they are so thin, the GPU goes bad on these as well.

GPS devices and cell phones also use BGA chips.

PS3 YLOD uses BGA chips. Yet there is no bolt mod for this.

The only device out of all of these that are repaired by items from the hardware store is the 360. The rest are either repaired by replacing the mainboard or by fixing or replacing the BGA chip.

Everything shown in this video is the PROPER way to repair BGA chips. There are other videos on youtube but many are incorrect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s38vQxXv0GE

Why X Clamps and related mods DO NOT work

http://xmoddz.com/truth-about-x-clamps

Why BGA issues occur, and why they didnt happen in the past

http://goarticles.com/article/Why-Xbox-360...73-E74/4912914/

In order to do repair you need a BGA rework station.

http://en.xs-sz.com/?gclid=COqmvNHjta4CFacQNAod6gmVow

That is a High Quality example.

There are DIY or cheapo methods that people use which involve griddles and SMD hot air stations. This is an improper setup. SMD hot air stations are meant for reworking SMD components and not BGA chips. A BGA chip is around 40mm in size, a SMD is around 2mm in size so using improper equipment will not give a proper repair. Heat guns are used for removing paint and i have nothing more to say on that.

two of your links have been truncated.

the meaning of truncated is??

truncated: chopped off at the end (ok, so i misused it slightly, as the forum removed characters in your links, not chopped them off at the end).

^^ see those? can't click through. url's really should be wrapped in either code tags or url tags.