RROD Preventation Mod for XBOX 360

[undamned]

Just got a 1st gen. 360 and didn't want it RRODing on me

Writeup here: http://therealundamned.blogspot.com/2009/06/preventing-xbox-360-rrod.html
-ud

[NFG]

Very interesting work.  I'd love to know about your long-term success with this. 

You don't mention which model you have.  Is it possible you've already got a Jasper unit, without (we hope) the same problems?

[l_oliveira]

Great read. While I agree with all of your points and opinions, I see that you forgot an very important issue on the XBOX360 poor ventilation issue:
The GPU heat sink air flow.


The XBOX360 air duct is of extremely poor design in the sense that the engineer who designed it forgot that if there's obstacles in the path,  the fluid  (in this case, AIR) will flow mostly through the easiest path.  On the early units the CPU has an enormous heat sink build of several aluminum fins with a copper heat pipe and copper base/core. This big heat sink requires an enormous ventilation hole on the air duct. The GPU heat sink on the inverse side is designed to fit under the DVD-ROM drive limiting considerably the space for the air to flow. Since the air is a fluid and both fans are on the *SAME* air duct, the outcome will be that most of the air sucked by the pair of heat sinks will flow through the CPU heat sink.

Microsoft knows this and this is why they designed the newer GPU heat sink with a heat pipe and a few extra aluminum fins sitting strategically on front of the CPU heat sink. Sad, futile attempt to diminish the problem. The proper way to solve the problem is put a wall dividing the air duct in two.

While that's the proper solution for the GPU overheating problem, it would have a increase on the ventilation noise and maybe an increase on dust accumulation, but I doubt that would bother anyone more than having to send the unit back in a coffin/casket to MS every six months.

I applied the air duct fix in my current XBOX360 unit (an 2006 made XENON console) which is working perfectly (we're in 2009, right ? lol).

[ProfessorBolts]

I hope this is semi on-topic. I've had great long term success with the Lain-Li XB01 which uses a similar method, in addition to much better cooling. It is a second gen xbox, samsung drive. I left it on for two days strait accidentally about 5 months ago, still works great.

[l_oliveira]

Letting the XBOX 360 on for long periods will actually cause it to last longer.

What damages it is the stress in the metal caused by the dilatation and shrink of the motherboard due to heat.  When you power on the system it heats, causing the 1st half of the "stress  session"...
When you shut it down, it cools off allowing the metal to return to it's original state, causing the other half of the stress.

The real fix is reduce the range of the temperature variation the GPU and nearby regions of the motherboard reducing the mechanical stress it's subjected to. 
This is why Microsoft added a heatpipe in the core of the GPU heatsink and put the heat exchanger for it in front of the CPU heatsink.

Using the stock cooling, a cut piece of milk box cartoon and the 12v modification on the fans I was able to make my Xenon run as cold as 40 Celsius on the GPU while playing Gears of War2.
Sadly it sounds like a dust buster. Still it's running pretty good. 
From a boxed lot of 4 consoles this is the only one that is still working.

[phreak97]

Sadly it sounds like a dust buster. Still it's running pretty good. 

silent fan mod anyone?
there should be some nice high flow near silent 12v fans available.

[l_oliveira]

Just to mention... 

I picked a few XBOX360 consoles which failed with cold joints (ironically it's cold joints on such a HOT part) on the GPU.  (3RLOD)
Also I picked some hopeless XBOX360 consoles for scavenging parts....  (Mostly I wanted the CPU heatsinks)

This is what I did to three consoles  they've been running for two weeks straight:



I took a CPU heatsink from a dead console and put on this one which was barely working. It's been solid since.
GPU has been running as cold as 35 degrees celcius.

Because the XENON (90nm) CPU heats a lot, it requires a heatsink with copper core. Having the same heatsink on the GPU made the thing run cold enough to stay solid. 
I believe Microsoft was eager to reduce the CPU to 65nm before reducing the GPU because copper is more expensive than aluminum. I mean that with the Falcon motherboard they reduced the CPU consumption, simplified the power supply and changed the CPU heatsink to a cheaper aluminum one.

Because the new GPU heatsink now occupy the space that previously belonged to the DVD drive, the drive is now staying outside of the case.


Sadly this fellow  sounds like an F14 tomcat...   lol

The three gray wires on the motherboard are the GPU-JTAG connections for the FREE60 JTAG hack. 
The white wires+single red wire are the connection for flash rom reprogramming.

[undamned]

Very interesting work.  I'd love to know about your long-term success with this. 

You don't mention which model you have.  Is it possible you've already got a Jasper unit, without (we hope) the same problems?

Glad you enjoyed it   No Jasper here.  It's a Xenon (can't recall the exact date, but pretty sure it's 2005).  We'll see how it holds up.  As long as the original soldering was decent, I think it'll do ok.  If not, it's a crap shoot, even with my mod.

The GPU heat sink on the inverse side is designed to fit under the DVD-ROM drive limiting considerably the space for the air to flow. Since the air is a fluid and both fans are on the *SAME* air duct, the outcome will be that most of the air sucked by the pair of heat sinks will flow through the CPU heat sink.

Exactly.  I actually considered this, but didn't really feel like dorking with the stock air flow scheme.

Microsoft knows this and this is why they designed the newer GPU heat sink with a heat pipe and a few extra aluminum fins sitting strategically on front of the CPU heat sink. Sad, futile attempt to diminish the problem. The proper way to solve the problem is put a wall dividing the air duct in two.

So what does that say about Microsoft's engineering if all they needed to do was modify an injection molded plastic shroud and they opted to design a complex metal heat pipe

While that's the proper solution for the GPU overheating problem, it would have a increase on the ventilation noise...

Why would that make it any louder?  Does the divider you installed vibrate as air passes by?

I've had great long term success with the Lain-Li XB01 which uses a similar method, in addition to much better cooling.

When I first spotted one of those I was like O_O

Way cool looking and such a great idea.  Maybe someday I'll build my own cool case

Sadly it sounds like a dust buster. Still it's running pretty good. 

silent fan mod anyone?
there should be some nice high flow near silent 12v fans available.

I did quite a bit of research about "silent" fans a while back when I was building the YsBox and basically the quiet fans don't move the air you would need for the 360 (unless the case was made completely out of fans or something, heh).  Essentially more air = more noise.  Sure some fans will be better built and cut off a few dB of noise, but, unless you want to water cool the thing or build a custom case w/ a huge amount of heatsink area, you can forget about "silent."
-ud

[l_oliveira]

On a follow up to this subject, I was given six broken XBOX360 consoles of different "versions" being four Xenons and two Falcons.
All with the dreaded GPU joints failure problem.

After a while tinkering with them (The picture I posted is from the first console I took for the experiments) I have four of them working (three Xenons and one of the two Falcons) and I'll have them running with this setup for a few months to know if they're solid.

Mostly I plan on making them into "homebrewn" systems (at least the Xenon ones) and could keep the Falcon for  HDMI gaming...
Meanwhile I'll keep playing games on them and see if they fail.

[undamned]

I was given six broken XBOX360 consoles of different "versions" being four Xenons and two Falcons.
All with the dreaded GPU joints failure problem.

After a while tinkering with them (The picture I posted is from the first console I took for the experiments) I have four of them working (three Xenons and one of the two Falcons) and I'll have them running with this setup for a few months to know if they're solid.

Did you re-flow the solder on the GPU's?
-ud

[l_oliveira]

Yes, I did reflow them, but once they were reworked they would last a week or two at best.  Of course considering that the metal is fatigued, nothing besides a real replacement of all solder balls can fix it properly.

So the real "cure" was reflow and then add "proper cooling".

The only real conclusion is that turning the thing on/off is what really causes it to break (physical stress). And keeping it cool helps as it keeps the physical stress under control.

P.S.: So far all of the consoles are playing fine and I do not avoid turning them on and off all the time just to simulate normal use and  stress the board as test.