That Pesky Xbox 360

I want to see how AOers deal with this one as opposed to the rest of the world.

Ok, so the 360 is riddled with a history of problems. We all know that, so I'll cut to the chase --

How do you take care of your 360? How do you avoid or keep problems to a minimum?

From what I've researched, there are various suggestions out there, some obviously contradicting others, such as these two:

1) Set the 360 horizontally. The disc drive is known to be noisy and has a bad habit of scratching disks in some cases. Sitting it vertically removes this problem.

2) Set the 360 vertically. Setting it horizontally covers more surface area and thus adds to the overheating problem. Setting it vertically helps ventilation.

My old 360 did fine disc-wise, wasn't even noisy, but after the red circle of death and a trip to M$, my refurbished replacement came in, and its drive has been rather noisy ever since, which has concerned me -- I'm really wondering if it's just going to up and eat a disc one of these days, though for the past few months, so far so good.

The other oddity is that this one's drive hangs when you press the open/close tray button. I have to press down on the tray with my finger after pressing the button to get it to release and open. Not a big deal, but curious. My previous one opened and closed normally.

So my theory at the moment is I need to figure out a way to lay it horizontal, but elevated, so that I have best of both worlds for the disk drive and ventilation. Don't know how I'm going to pull that off just yet, but I'm turning gears over the idea...

So what about AO 360 owners? What have you learned, and how do you keep yours running smoothly?

I noticed that keeping mine horizontal seems to help heat dissipation.

Other than that, I make sure it's not in a boxed in space to that the heat can freely escape. If I'm playing in a hot room (80+), I blow on the top of it with a fan. (This fixed my "Disk unreadable" error that I got this summer when I played in very hot weather with no AC.)

- X

I have to agree - horizontal - with a little something under the unit to get the cooling vents off of whatever surface you have it on.

Cool, that's exactly what I was suspecting...

Hmm, so I need to think of a way to elevate horizontally without it looking crap.

Time to hit the drawing board!

I treat my 360 like a redheaded step child. Seriously, I bought it from a friend at a good price so i didn't question it's origin. Unfortunately when the circle of death showed up is when i noticed the serial had been scrubbed off the back. So with no option to send it in to MS, i ripped that beyatch open and stuck a 3 penny stack on each of the 4 ram chips, twiddled with the screw tightness on the X clamps and she's bangin on all 4 cylinders again. been rockin my 12 pennies for about 4 months now, keep it vertical and haven't had any problems with it...

I've had my 360 for maybe about 2 months now - I don't play it massive amounts of time (maybe a few times a week unless I go on a game binge). I keep it vertical, and other than quite a loud noise coming from the fans I haven't had any problems (any even that doesn't bother me).

I've touched the side of it after playing for a good few hours and it didn't seem amazingly hot. Never had any problems with cooling - although I do live in Glasgow.

ac

Hmmm,

1. Buy 4 bottles of JD and one tube of superglue.
2. Drink the JD
3. Try to find the X-Box :D
4. Having sobered up, reserve the bottle caps and recycle the bottles
5. Superglue the bottle caps to the X-Box. It now has 4 "feet" :cool:

You can do the same sort of thing with wine corks......... just use liquid shoe polish to make them look "professional" You will also need a ruler and a sharp knife to slice them to size;)

One of the main things Microsoft (tried to) fix was the heat problem from the original xbox. They added ventilation to the sides and the back (when it is horizontal that is). Unfortunately for the most part, they failed... My cousin received the RCD (red circle of death) went out and bought a couple computer fans they made special for the 360, and hasn't had a problem again; besides the noise of course.

I do like most, and keep the ventilation to a max, don't have it close to anything and it runs fine.
Alot of artistic people out there will open it up and do some pretty cool things with the casing!

For more information, the best site/forum for xbox's is xbox-scene.com...
(I am not sure about any files on there so always scan)

ArPaNET,
I don't know where you heard that, but the original xbox had no heating issues that I know of. Every one I know that had an xbox never had any issues at all, everyone with a 360 has. I would say that M$ was not really thinking about heat, they thought some airflow from a few fans would suffice, which it does not. If overheating was a forthought, they would have made better heatsyncs, don't ya think?

nihil, GREAT tutorial on making xbox legs. I will definatly follow your tutorial if I ever buy a 360. Maybe you should beef it up and post it on xbox-scene :)

I didn't mean the big black bulky thing that microsoft first came out with, I meant the first wave of 360's to hit the market...

Sorry for the confussion cross

Ran it two nights horizontal now...

Interestingly enough, the disk tray opens right up with a press of the button most of the time now, with one exception. So far I don't have to really tap on it to get it to open.

Bottom was a little warm after a couple hours play, but I haven't had the chance to rig up a means of elevating it (or trying Nihil's advice ;)).

I haven't given it the proper test to see if it freezes after a few hours, but so far it's running pretty well.

you could always get a laptop cooler/aluminum stand with fans.

:eek:

Genius!

I think I may just look into that...

nyko makes one, it costs though

Gotta link by any chance?

I got a Halo Special Edition one for Christmas, and I've been wondering for a while what that freaking noise was (at first I thought it was the fans, then I kept reading it was the DVD drive). I run mine horizontally (I can't bring myself to having a DVD spin vertically), and I did notice last time I was at Best Buy that they're selling a whole bunch of XBox cooling systems - stuff like this: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1186006783486

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nihil

Hmmm,

1. Buy 4 bottles of JD and one tube of superglue.
2. Drink the JD
3. Try to find the X-Box :D
4. Having sobered up, reserve the bottle caps and recycle the bottles
5. Superglue the bottle caps to the X-Box. It now has 4 "feet" :cool:

You can do the same sort of thing with wine corks......... just use liquid shoe polish to make them look "professional" You will also need a ruler and a sharp knife to slice them to size;)

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ROFL! I am definately going to pull that when I finally get one :)

http://www.divineo.com/cgi-bin/div-us/zz-360-intcool (the nyko thingie)

Ah yes, I'm very familiar with the Nyko one, and it wasn't at all expensive last I saw it. However, I keep reading on various sites that you should steer clear of it, because it leeches power off the xbox, resulting in other problems, because it plugs between the console and the power cable, thus not allowing enough power to reach the box.

Not sure how true that is, but given I keep bumping into that report, I figure there has to be some validity to the claim.

Yeah I am not sure about the ones that go between the actual power source and the box... I would say if your going to use a xbox fan, use the usb ports to power it!

I figure that the usb ports are already figured into the system so using them "shouldn't" hurt, but to use the ones that go between the power source and the box; that is not configured into the system... sounds like problems to me.

Well, been home sick, so lots of time for gaming...Ran the 360 for several hours yesterday, running horizontal, no problems.

ArPaNET -- I have a vertical stand that has a built-in fan, runs on USB. That one has never caused any problems, so I think you're right on the money there.

So did some window shopping last night...USB-powered laptop cooling base at Wally World is a mere $20. I think I've found my solution. :D

Hmmmmm,

Quote:

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I think I've found my solution

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I prefer the "solution" that I suggested :drink:

:D