As with many people my xbox 360 decided to start giving me the red ring of death. The red LEDs that tell you the hardware is messed up. The error code I end up getting is 0102. Unknown error. Since I was outside my warranty I decided to give this a try.
http://www.youtube.com/wat
Granteed it worked. No red ring and I can play games again, however after an hour the game system will freeze up and eventually after multiple times the red ring appeared again. I applied the fix again and it works. I want to prevent needing to apply the heat gun again only because I can't imagine it being good for the system over and over again. It seems to me that the system continues to overheat like crazy. I went as far as to leave the machine open on top of my desk with the dvd drive moved so it doesn't sit on top of the cpu's heat sink. I've thought about water cooling this but the water cooling kit for the 360 is around $400 which I would be better off getting a new core system with a really long warranty. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how to overcome this freezing and get the 360 stable again?
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Didn't appear to be dust or corrosion, I am still pretty sure the there is an overall heat problem. In my opinion the internal design is poor, initial thoughts are that the overall air flow is lacking and so are the heat sinks. It's like it's overclocked without proper cooling. Computers even game computers should have this kind of problem, so why does the console?
Ok, it seems obvious after viewing all the problems people have had, and all the 'fixes' people have come up with that there are 2 major flaws in the xbox system....
1... The X clamp that holds the heatsink down for the GPU and CPU. The way the clamp is designed, it pulls downward on each tip of the "X" (take time to imagine the downward pull on each of the four corners)... this holds the heatsink firmly against the chip. In the MIDDLE of the X, there is a rubber/plastic piece that comes to a point and rests on the bottom of the motherboard... upward pressure is applied from this center piece (take time to visualize the downward pull on each of the 4 corners of the X-clamp, and the resulting upward pull is all transfered to a tiny spot in the middle of the X)...
OK, if you took the time to visual, you should be able to figure out that pulling DOWN on each corner on the X while pushing UP in the middle of the X on a motherboard is not a good thing....
Would you take the motherboard out of your computer, place it so it is balanced on a tiny block positioned directly under your processor, and then apply downward pressure right next to the four corners of your processor??? it soulds like a good way to pop the chip out, or break the mother board!!!
Not only does this obviously put stress on the board, but the x-clamp is not 'spring' steel... and therefore, like most steel, will lose its retention strength...
(basically as time goes by... it may not be applying enough downward pressure on the heatsink to maintain proper contact with the GPU) I say GPU, because that is where more issues occur.
Many people experience problems with the CPU AFTER the X-clamp fix...
(see bottom of post for x-clamp replacement recommendations)
Soo, the X-clamp, This is where are problems begin...
First off, the CPU, GPU, and ram (4 on top, 4 on bottom)
are not soldered the "old-fashioned' way, with tiny metal leads sticking out on each side, or even pins passing throuogh the bottom and soldered on the other side...
as you may already know, these components are connected using a "ball grid array" or "BGA"
basically instead of pins being soldering to the board... pictures a bunch of balls of solder, lined up in a square grid... None of this is visible, as it is between the chip (CPU, GPU, RAM) and the circuit board....
Now add another flaw to the system: the cooling....
Two fans share one plastic 'air duct' that leads to the heat sinks...
The CPU heatsink is almost as wide as the GPU heatsink, except it is over 4 times taller and has a copper tube built in for additional cooling... This means that the opening on the 'air duct' for the CPU side provides approx 4x the area to pull in cool air compared to the GPU side. AND, because the dual exhaust fans and plastic air duct is not seperated, most of the air flows through the larger CPU heatsink, and very little air travels across the GPU heatsink. The air simply takes the path of least resistence.
You can fix this issue by using thin cardboard (such as from a cereal box, posterboard, or stiff note cards) to seperate the air path to the two fans.... this way, one fan is dedicated to cooling the GPU, and one for the CPU.
To make things worse, the already inefficiant GPU heatsink is covered by the DVD drive, which also produces more heat.
Most failures (MOST, not ALL) that cause the 3 red lights are due to problems with the GPU not being seated correctly... Many believe that their 3-light ring of death is simply overheating.... This is not true, but has some merit, as overheating described above may have led to expansion and slight unallighment of the solder balls (BGA) mentioned earlier)
If the system's problem is overheating... TWO lights will flash, not THREE... (which you can observe by fixing your console and then not replacing the heatsink)
So we have two design flaws: an X-clamp that flexes the board, and a poor cooling system.
Now, we combine the two... the flexing of the board will slightly pull the board away from the chip at certain connection points... this does not necessarily mean the contact is lost, but it is not as secure....
With the heat produced and poor cooling, the lead-free solder used by microsoft in their BGA becomes softened (NOT melted... this kind of temperature would leave you with a crispy chip or circuit board!)...
The board flexing in addition to the softened solder balls causes the ball grid to come slightly out of allignment or causes the solder to simply lose connection to the board (exact cause unknown because the solder is not visible beneath the chip).
Hopefully, this explination helps understand certain 'fixes' that seem bizare but actually work, even if only temporary... wrapping the towel around the console overheats the chips and softens the solder again, which seems to re-allign the grid array and provide connection... however this connection is only temporary as the solder has not been reattached properly.
Using a heat gun on these components works under the same idea....
replacing the x-clamp with regular bolts aims at preventing the circuit board from flexing, but also allows additional pressure to be applied to the top of the chip in order to acheive conenction. As I mentioned earlier, this additional pressure must be extremely slight or else you will slightly bend the board in the opposite direction and create the same problem (only in reverse) the x-clamp orignally caused....
So what does microsoft do to fix these problems????
Those of use still lucky to have a warranty receive their xbox back with an upgraded heatsink and different spacers on the x-clamp.....
The "Elite" version of the xbox has added epoxy around the GPU and CPU chips to hold them in place:
See the difference here:
original xbox w/o epoxy:
http://a330.g.akamai.net/7
elite xbox w/ epoxy: http://a330.g.akamai.net/7
As for the 'heat gun' method... here is an industrial version of the fix, which is actually supposed to be done by preheating the circuit board, and then attaching the chip with the BGA on the bottom. This provides the best fix for the xbox lol (if you want to spend 7 grand to make sure you can always fix your xbox!!) ... but it does a good job of showing and explaining the ball grid array as well:
http://www.zeph.com/xbox_r
If you decide you want to try the "X-clamp fix", there are various instructions... but whichever set you follow keep this in mind:
1. Replace only the GPU (the low profile heatsink stuck under a hot DVD drive with nothing to pull air across the heatsink)
[as the fan shroud leads up to the back of the GPU heatsink... it has no way to pull air ACROSS the heatsink, but rather sucks air in through the back of the heatsink]
Replacing only the GPU heatsink will avoid trying to fix something that isn't broken (the CPU heatsink has plenty of surface area and performs much better than the GPU heatsink)
If this doesn't solve your problem... THEN you may want to replace the CPU x-clamp as well.
2. When whatever instructions you are following tells you to place washers on the bolt prior to placing the heatsink on top... do not assume the number of washers the instructions say to use is correct, EVEN if they have the part number from Lowes or whatever....
Instead, stack the washers next to the GPU chip to determine how high the chip sets off the board... you want to use the number of washers that is closest to the height of the chip, BUT NOT TALLER or your heatsink will have no contact with the chip.
EX: instructions told me to use 2 washers on the CPU side, when in reality, the CPU sat 3 washers high.... using only 2 washers was pushing down on the chip with more force than required, which leads to the circuit board flexing in the opposite direction as with the x-clamp.
None of this is a perfect solution, but hopefully it will help you better understand what is wrong with your xbox 360, and help you decide how you want to go about fixing it.
currently, I have done the x-clamp replacement, AND used a heat gun to reseat the chips....
It works fairly consistently, however from time to time it freezes....
I can run it for 6 hours straight with no problem, however, the freezing appears to be random....
when it occurs, I usually slightly tighten/loosen the nuts holding down the heatsink and that get its back up and running.
Good luck!!!
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by: MASQUERAIDPosted on 2006-09-07 at 14:38:35ID: 17474960
Have seen people using a household fan by the box successfully but this seems to be progressive on the boxes affected, either dust or corrosion?
See here: http://tinyurl.com/lhpza