Mudderoy
09-20-2010, 10:08 AM
It just dawned on me that you may either be an XBox 360 gamer or like me you just finance it for the kids to play on. Actually my youngest son bought the "Arcade" model and I just pay for the "Gold" XBox live membership. He's off attending college and he left the 360 for the younger girls to play on.
Here is something I found out about recently. The XBox 360 has a design flaw. When it gets hot, the motherboard warps slightly and causes the box to fail displaying a red ring, also known as the "Red Ring Of Death", a take off from Microsofts operating system "Blue Screen Of Death".
Basically you replaced how the heat sinks for the CPU and GPU are attached to the motherboard, and then you heat the motherboard so the solder melts and makes a good connection again. I have read that you may have to re-heat the mother board every 9 months to a year, but it's about 30 minutes to fix so it isn't that big of a deal.
I won't go into the detail here, unless someone needs the information, and requests it. Basically it's $6 of bolts and washers from Lowe's and 15 minutes with a heat gun. I used an IR thermometer to verify how hot I was getting the motherboard, but this probably isn't necessary to the overall success of the repair.
This XBox 360 was the "arcade" model which means it doesn't come with a hard drive. I purchased a hard drive holder from eBay for $20 and a new hard drive for $38. I spent about 30 minutes last night installing it, now the kids have the equivalent of a XBox 360 Pro with the addition of the 120 GB hard drive.
Here is something I found out about recently. The XBox 360 has a design flaw. When it gets hot, the motherboard warps slightly and causes the box to fail displaying a red ring, also known as the "Red Ring Of Death", a take off from Microsofts operating system "Blue Screen Of Death".
Basically you replaced how the heat sinks for the CPU and GPU are attached to the motherboard, and then you heat the motherboard so the solder melts and makes a good connection again. I have read that you may have to re-heat the mother board every 9 months to a year, but it's about 30 minutes to fix so it isn't that big of a deal.
I won't go into the detail here, unless someone needs the information, and requests it. Basically it's $6 of bolts and washers from Lowe's and 15 minutes with a heat gun. I used an IR thermometer to verify how hot I was getting the motherboard, but this probably isn't necessary to the overall success of the repair.
This XBox 360 was the "arcade" model which means it doesn't come with a hard drive. I purchased a hard drive holder from eBay for $20 and a new hard drive for $38. I spent about 30 minutes last night installing it, now the kids have the equivalent of a XBox 360 Pro with the addition of the 120 GB hard drive.