RROD on XBOX 360

[TheForce]

Last evening I went to use my XBOX 360 and immediately turning it on I get 3 /4 of the ring in red and no video.

Going to Google the symptom I was not surprised to learn this is a very common system error where many gamers have been before. That was the good news part. The bad news was the fix. It seems there were about as many different approaches to the fix as there were posters. Fortunately all had the same theme in that all referenced the CPU and GPU heatsink failing to make good contact and over heating the processors causing them to unsolder and become loose or bad solder joints and the connections failing. The fix is to reheat the chips to resolder them to the board.
OK, after reviewing a dozen videos on this part of the process it seems that the best technique is to use a high temperature heat gun ( hot air) to remelt the solder. I have a heat gun adequate for this use. Some of these gamer characters appear rather dubious and so I wonder if any satelliteguys have done this procedure? I welcome any tips and tricks on it. Using the youtube videos I successfully removed the MB and heat sinks now. And have the old heatsink compound all removed with laquer thinner. The chips are nice and shiny now and ready for assembly.
In all cases reviewed the remedy was to trash the X clamps and bolt the heat sinks directly to the MB. This does seem to be a better method to insure permanent contact. I saw my x clamps were not reap snug before removing them and the heat sinks had actually slopped around which is why they probably failed.

 

[Kevinw]

The cue is to send it back to MS. They extended the warranty to 3 yeas on RRoD .

 

[dont24]

Wait. Did you already crack open your 360? If so, you may not have much luck getting it repaired if the "seal" is broken.

 

[TheForce]

First off the 360 is just 3 years old by the calendar. And yes, I did open it up and broke the seal. I'll give it a try to fix here and if that doesn't work, I'll be looking for a new replacement part in the MB. It's good there are lots of gamers who have tackled this common problem but bad many of these look like they are escapees from the local mental hospital.

I have a few games but rarely use the XBOX for that. I mostly use it for media player and HD DVD.

 

[TheForce]

Doesn't seem any satguys have done this before so, I'll be the first.

I removed the X clamps and replaced with 5mm bolts and nylon spacers. Before putting the MB back in I carefully examined the board for bad solder joints. Saw quite a few that looked bad plus a small capacitor that had fallen off its mount and was loose inside the case. I could see where it came from on the bottom of the CPU so I pencil soldered it back onto the board. I used the heatgun to resolder all the chips. After cooling, I connected it back up to the power supply and the RROD was gone. reassembled and checked again before putting back into the HT rack.

Now I know where the XBOX got it's name from. It comes from those poorly designed X clamps that hold the heatsinks to the chips. It's not really a good design since the heat seems to remove the spring action and makes the heat sink come loose and this causes excessive heat build up that causes the chips to unsolder themselves. I hope Microsoft never tries to build real computers, or maybe they need to hire some real computer designers.

We'll see if my remount holds up now. Played a number of flight and combat games for about 3 hours and all I did was run the batteries dead in the controller. Otherwise no failures.

 

[dont24]

Nice job. I think you may be the 1st here, fixing your own 360 like this.

 

[dont24]

Just got the RROD on my son's console. Purchased in 12/06, so out of warranty. Not paying $100 to get it repaired. Who knows what type I'll get back. Dell has the arcade for $159 - 3% Bing cash back. I'll get what I can for the broken one on ebay.

 

[BlackHitachi]

Just got the RROD on my son's console. Purchased in 12/06, so out of warranty. Not paying $100 to get it repaired. Who knows what type I'll get back. Dell has the arcade for $159 - 3% Bing cash back. I'll get what I can for the broken one on ebay.

Wow this is really bad!! Micro$oft really should do the right thing and fix all of there defective consoles no matter how long the Duct tape lasts!

 

[dont24]

Wow this is really bad!! Micro$oft really should do the right thing and fix all of there defective consoles no matter how long the Duct tape lasts!

I agree. I know it was out of warranty, but called M$ anyways and ripped them a new one. Didn't do any good, but made me feel better.

 

[TheForce]

After doing lots of research on the You Tube sites, I felt with my electronics background, I should be able to fix the problem and did. I do not recommend what I did to anyone with lessor experience with surface mount repair. The scariest part for me was when I saw a SM capacitor just laying in the chassis. Where did that fall from? I studied the board for a good 15 minutes with my magnifying head gear and high intensity spot light and saw the place it had come from. None of the YouTube fixes suggested this could happen. If there were many parts that fell off the board, I would have been SOL to do the repair.

So far my XBOX 360 has been on day and night for half a month and is still working fine with the modified heat sink mount.

These are the clamps I removed:

 

[dont24]

I ended up getting $35 + shipping for my broken 360 on ebay. Not a bad deal. So the arcade model will end up costing me ~$128. M$ wanted $100 to "repair" mine. For an extra $28, I know I'm getting a Jasper with another 3yr RROD warranty.

 

[FunkyBoss]

I made the 'x-clamp' fix on my 360 last June, and it has been working (knock on wood) since.

My neighbor had the same issue, and I helped him do his too. His lasted for about 2 months, and now it's back. So it appears to be hit-or-miss if and how long they work for afterward.

 

[dont24]

It sucks. At the very least, the 3yr RROD warranty should start over from the time you get your replacement. This console was already repaired once. I would love to tell M$ where to stick their console, but we have too much invested in 360s.

 

[mwgiii]

Nice job Don!

 

[Derwin0]

It sucks. At the very least, the 3yr RROD warranty should start over from the time you get your replacement. This console was already repaired once.

How else would they continue to sell more 360's though?

 

[Ramy]

Good job Don. I have known others that have done what you did and some had success and others didn't.

 

[BobMurdoch]

Well my launch day console died 2 years and one month after I got it, ... and my replacement console dies...... 2 years and one month after I got IT.

Unfortunately, I'm having a bunch of my friends over this weekend, and the XBox is one of the big draws.

So, it was off to the store to get an Arcade model. The idea was to swap the hard drive, transfer the licenses (via the tool on XBox.com) and be back up and running. I had bought the extended warranty direct from Microsoft for three years, which is up, but I believe they extended that warranty for RROD failures. I'll find out later today.

However, after looking at the Arcade model, I changed my mind. Went for an extra $100 for the elite model. 120 gb hard drive and a wireless controller was worth it.

The big beneficiary of all this is my almost 16 year old son, who has my old original XBox in his room. MS just announced that ALL XBox live multiplayer functionality for the first generation XBox is being turned off on 4/15 to get ready for major enhancements coming when the Halo Reach Beta drops soon. Bottom line, his ability to play Halo 2 in his room is going away. So, if I can get this fixed under warranty, I'll give him the replacement console and snap in the new 120 GB drive in the side and have him migrate over his gamertag. He probably will lose a lot of the DLC, but most of the older map packs are free now.

Going to grab an HDMI cable and see if there is any PQ improvement over the 1080i I had from the component cables. I've got my Projector throwing an image on a 92" screen, so it might be worth the upgrade.

 

[dont24]

Contact M$. You should be able to get a HDD transfer kit. Used to be free of charge. Not sure what the deal is these days. Pretty sure it's free to people upgrading to an Elite.

 

[BobMurdoch]

Didn't need to.... They are both 120 GB drives, I don't know how much more vulnerable the older one is (it is about 2 years old) vs. the new one, but the other glitch is that a lot of my saved video content can't be redownloaded anymore (music videos, tv shows, etc.). They were viewable last night on the old drive, but they weren't able to have their keys refreshed off of the "redownload" option.

 

[TheForce]

Good job Don. I have known others that have done what you did and some had success and others didn't.

Well, I have to admit, I've been doing electronics design in broadcast for many years but this is the first time I ever used the heat gun technique to resolder a few hundred connections all at once. I painted flux all over the solder side of the board and heated with hot air until I saw the solder flow. Took no more than a few seconds.

Many of the video fixes on the web are a little too chancy for me. They rely on super heating the chip to do the solder. I think this is a bad technique. I know that the problem has to be the heat causing the solder to make bad connections so the fix must be two fold:
1. Fix the bad or broken connections on the chips, likely dozens of them.
2. Redesign the heat sinking system to prevent future failure.

The Microsoft X clamp is IMO a very poor design in that it must rely on steel spring tension to maintain heat connection to the chip's surface. Heat and steel causes a loss of spring tension ( metallurgy 101 ) So, I used a series of spacers and bushings to firmly clamp the heatsink to the board. Using some nylon spacers allows for enough tension yet still allowing a little compression for expansion and contraction during a heat cool cycle.

So far, the xbox360 has been on 27/7 and it has not failed.