According to a survey commissioned by the CNET UK, 60% of Xbox 360s have had hardware failures. According to the survey 47% of Xbox 360s have failed within the first year of purchase. I have personally become part of this statistic. I have gone through 3 Xbox’s within 2 years. I was able to return the faulty Xbox to Best Buy under their warranty plan. At some point  I discovered that you could mod the Xbox to read game backups.  After the third Xbox, the BestBuy warranty expired and I thought Microsoft may have fixed the issue so I modded the Xbox.  Well a few months after that, I got the RRoD again. Now I was stuck. No store warranty and no Microsoft warranty since I modded it. After looking online for a fix, I found this long term solution. This worked for a while but I got RROD again. I am considering getting an Xbox 360 Arcade since it is $199 now and has HDMI output. I’m going to give it one more try and then might get a PS3.

Open the Xbox 360

Use this guide to open the xbox, http://www.xboxchopshop.com/catalog/man_360_open.php,  as mentioned in the i-hacked post.

Notes about opening the Xbox 360: I used a small screwdriver and leverage to pop the tabs in the back of the xbox. You will hear a popping noise when you push on the small tabs. This can be very frustrating to get the cover off. I recommend getting the Xbox 360 Unlock toolkit from www.mod-chip.com for this part and save your sanity.

Materials Needed

• 8 M5-.80 x 10 Machine Screws  (Lowes part number:  #138433)
• 16 #10 Flat Washers – Nylon (Lowes part number: #139065)
• 16 5mm Flat Washers – Metal (Lowes part number: #13831)
• Torx T10 screw driver
• Torx T8 screw driver

Notes on materials: You can purchase these parts online and save yourself a little headache, but if you are like me and can’t wait I found similar parts at a local hardware store but I did have to make a few modifications which I will talk about later. You can also use 3/16 inch machine screws and the smallest washers that fit on the screws. The M5 screws have a better thread fit than the 3/16 inch however.

I feel the washers are the most important of this modification.  The parts list include metal washers and nylon washers.  I have read that the nylon washers are used as insulators to prevent shorting, but I feel all you need is the nylon washers not for insulation but for cushioning. The reason the washers are so important is because they provide the proper spacing between the motherboard and the chips. Improper height of the washers will either prevent the heatsinks from contacting the chips or create the possibility of over tightening and damaging the chips.

Tip: Place the washer(s) on the motherboard an look to see if the top of the washer lines up with the top of the chip then you will know you have the right height.

Prepare the heat sinks

After you have opened the Xbox 360, removed the motherboard  and heat sink X-clamps as depicted in the video, you need to unscrew the bolts off the the heat sink where the X-clamps attached. You will be screwing the machine screws directly into theses screw holes through the motherboard.  My screws happen to be a bit longer than the ones in the parts list so I needed to drill through the flat heat sink to get the screw to go in all the way. If you buy the parts from the item list you will not have to do this . If you do, drill the hole from the top instead of through the screw holes to avoid damaging the threads.

According to the video I put some thermal paste on the chips after cleaning them off.  Then with the motherboard on its side so the screws wont fall out,  hand screw the bolts into the heatsinks until thy are snug. Do not tighten yet.

Plug the video cable, power cable, and daughter board (the power button ) in and allow the Xbox to overheat.  You will see 2 flashing red lights to let you the chips are overheated.

Notes on overheating: If the red lights come on right away and the heat sinks are not really hot, then the heat sinks are not making proper contact with the chips. Either tighten the screws a little more or get the right height washers. It took my xbox about a minute for the 2 red lights to start flashing.

Finally tighten the screws while the heat sinks are still hot. Be careful not to touch the heatsinks while hot (ouch!). Tighten the screws in a diagonal pattern. For example tighten the top left screw then the bottom right, then top right, then bottom left.

Final Thoughts

I thought I would never get my Xbox 360 working again, but this fix is relatively easy and is worth a shot. This will void your warranty (if you care) and you might as well mod the Xbox 360 DVD drive to play your backed up  games while you have it opened. You need to update the firmware on the DVD drive to play backed up games. Installing the Blaster 360 will be handy so you don’t need to open the Xbox anymore when new firmwares come out.

If this doesn’t work and you are going to buy a new Xbox, make sure you get the extended warranty plan from BestBuy or whatever store you get it from. It paid for itself for me since I had to return my xbox 3 times for RRod.

Update:

Microsoft may have permanently fixed the RRoD problem in new hardware, so you don’t have to be afraid of the RRoD anymore.

Penny trick

worked once, now it’s RRoDing again. I also added a fan to try to cool the system down further (See pic).

The next “fix” I found involves bolting the CPU/GPU down with machine screws. We’ll see how that goes.

Update: I fixed my Xbox using the screws. See my latest post.