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Xbox 360 Failures Explained
In response to the recent Mercury News interview, a man who has had 8 consoles fail so far explains what he believes the issue with the hardware is.
His explanation can be found in the responses to the recent interview with Microsoft's Todd Holmdahl.
... the problem isn't just with launch units. Of the 8 I've had so far, only 2 were manufactured in the first three months of launch. The last one I had red-ring on me was manufactured in November of '06 - a full year after launch.
The problem is that the cooling design of the 360 doesn't hold up. The cooling of the CPU was well done, with a heat pipe to draw the heat away from the chip (and accordingly, away from the mainboard). The problem is that the GPU and its low-profile heatsink sit under the DVD drive, and are given a very narrow channel for air to be pulled acrosss the heatsink by the fans. When the GPU heats up enough, not only does it reflow the solder in the ball grid array slightly, it can cause the entire mainboard to flex - a phenomenon largely caused by the X-shaped brackets that hold the heatsinks on under the mainboard. They hold the heatsinks down to the chips with a tension fit that presses up directly underneath those chips.
So when the system gets too hot, the combination of loosened solder with a mainboard that flexes from heat causes the GPU or CPU to actually break its connection from the board - resulting in the 3 red lights and secondary error code 0102 (the "unknown hardware error" code).
This is true of ALL systems manufactured thus far, not just the launch systems. Hopefully, Microsoft's new measure of adding a heatpipe to the GPU heatsink will reduce the heat on the mainboard itself enough to keep this from happening. We shall see.
News by Richard Manley.
Check this out too: http://www.gwn.com/news/story.php/id/13139/Microsoft_360_Failure_Rate_Still_A_Secret.html
This makes me very dissapointed in the hardware. Microsoft should fix this immediently.
Ya i took apart my xbox 360 for repairs and on the back of the motherboard I noticed something unusal ... their are these white things placed over the black chips... are they saposed to be their or should i not tuch themm... has anyone who has taken apart an xbox 360 seen these before!??!!? they can come right off
Help!!! Please And Thank You
Akm4everz
If I was you I would replace them. Check this out. http://www.eurasia.nu/wiki/index.php?pagename=Xbox360EraserFixError0102
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