Don’t let anyone tell you that Xbox 360 Elites are immune that that most ubiquitous of Xbox360 hardware problems: the infamous Red Ring of Death. We’ve all heard of it, where the Xbox sullenly displays three red lights in the front and nothing but nothing seems to be able to bring it back to life except sending it off to Redmond for repairs.
It happened to mine just after Christmas. The machine being more than a year old, Microsoft wanted to charge me for repairs, so I was more inclined to find what was going on. I looked at a number of remedies, many intriguing to out and out bizarre. A common thread seemed to be that forced overheats might bring the device back to life. More investigation yielded that most Red Ring of Death (RROD) problems are caused by a connection failure between CPU and GPU.
The fix to the problem for me (actually Mathue did most of the work, I just did the research) turned out to be correcting a flaw in the basic Xbox360 design–the way heat sinks are held in place–a problem that remains in the Elite model the same as the basic model. This is not a project for the faint of heart and requires some technical knowledge. If you’re not comfortable working inside of electronics, the fix best be left to technician. The current mounting system in Xbox360′s does not prevent the very hot CPUs and GPUs from deforming in their surface connection with the mother board and the fix is to assure that the chips a tightly sandwiched between the heat sinks and the mother board.
While usually skeptical of these things, you can either search out on you tube some ideas of how to replace the heat sink bracketing system with steel screws/bolts some good info here.) You will also need to re-heat with a hairdryer or heat gun some key components to re-establish their connection with the mother board. This is a delicate operation. I ultimately paid the $25 for information from http://3redlightfix.com/. While their information is pricey, it does appear to work and does provide you with step-by-step info for finding you way around the Xbox360 interior.
The Xbox360 is the machine for Halo3, but I have not found that it is a well built machine. Maybe they’ll get it right with Windows7 on the Xbox720. :)
After about three weeks of testing, I find that fix keeps things going for a while, but it does not seem to be as permanent a fix as we could hope for. I find that the fix needs to be repeated too frequently as the thermal problems will likely continue. The only permanent fix would have to come from Microsoft in the form of a better design.
-K
