upgraded cooling on my 360

[jay_red]

Im sure many of you know of the crappy stock cooling on an xbox 360, and how the heat is the killer of consoles. I have been an advocate of modding the cooling ever since my forst 360 died on me. I have done it all, from thermal paste to the 12 volt fan mod. I have even gone as far as adding fans and putting holes in the case for better intake.

My current xbox (I think its my 4th lol) is Jtag'ed and I wanted to make sure it lasted, so I had gone all out and got the "whisper max" fans and what a disappointment, they were LOUD! and I dont think they were cooling much better than the stock fans, but I have been running them for over a year and its been ok, this along with an extra fan placed near the CPU heat sink. Whenever I fired up the xbox it was like a jet taking off, and today I was finally fed up and decided to go for Function over form.

First off, I took out the tiny secondary fan that I had (which was very loud) and Slapped a 120mm hanging off, it has a grill/filter to keep dust down, and yes I cut a giant hole in my xbox, but this isnt the worst of it...

Forgive my mess of wires please!


Next was to get rid of the crappy "whisper max" and get some real air flow. Warning, severe modification was required to make these fit!


The result? I couldnt believe my ears when I turned it on! I had to check that the fans were even flowing! Its amazing! As for the temps, the cpu is a nice 40c at idle, and the GPU is an average 60c, but this is due to the horrible design and placement of the GPU. These temps were taken from the built in readings from Freestyle Dash.

[Hazerd]

nice, i hope all that effort didnt cost to much, would of been easier to just trade it in and buy the newer model

[jay_red]

I guess you missed the part where I said it was jtag modded eh?

Edit: and I only spent $15 on fans and whatnot as I already had the 120mm kicking around.

[Ziggy]

YOU SHOULD HAVE WATER COOLED IT!!! Nah, just kidding.

Are the fans powered from the console, or externally?

I'm not familiar with the regular temps on a stock 360, how do the temps compare with the fans you added?

[jay_red]

The fans on the back are powered by the stock fan connector that supplies 12v, the 120mm is tapped into a 12 volt on the dvd drive (I could have found a spot on the board but this was easier)

Stock temps can be as high as 70c + at idle due to the horrible design. I just played a game and checked the temps and was at 45c for the cpu and 62 for the gpu, not bad.

I was inspired by a fan mod I found here:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=183327
Though I obviously didnt go that extreme. I thought about removing the DVD drive as he did to gain max cooling, but decided against it to not loose that functionality.

[The Last Horseman]

Do you know what chip your 360 has? Mine has the very last chip (possibly second to last, I'm not sure) and I have yet to find anyone else who has had Red Ring with this chip. I'm just wondering why you felt the need to do all of this?

[Hobie-wan]

I'm just wondering why you felt the need to do all of this?

Did you read the first post, or just look at the pictures?

[jay_red]

Do you know what chip your 360 has? Mine has the very last chip (possibly second to last, I'm not sure) and I have yet to find anyone else who has had Red Ring with this chip. I'm just wondering why you felt the need to do all of this?

Mine is a Falcon board, the latest for the Fat xbox's would be the Jasper (which are supposed to be very resistant to the red rings) I did this because, I want to make sure that this 360 lasts me, and for the simple fact that I enjoy doing stuff like this. I had fun making it all work, and seeing a finished product that performed better than when I started.

[ChuChu Flamingo]

Very nice work. I hope it last longer.

I still think you cannot prevent the inevitable. Shit lead free solder combined with any heat over time will still cause rrod. It will just take longer.

Speaking of which, I need to open up my PS3 and put some arctic silver 5 on the gpu/cpu. The stock paste looks like a toddler put it on at times and dries out.

[jay_red]

Very nice work. I hope it last longer.

I still think you cannot prevent the inevitable. Shit lead free solder combined with any heat over time will still cause rrod. It will just take longer.

Speaking of which, I need to open up my PS3 and put some arctic silver 5 on the gpu/cpu. The stock paste looks like a toddler put it on at times and dries out.

This xbox is interesting, I found it at a used record/game store, but it was brand new, even though it was a couple years old. I paid a premium knowing it had the exploitable dash, and that it was brand new never used. As soon as I got it J-tag modded I did the thermal paste/x clamp removal, drilled some vent holes and added the whisper max/extra fan. So before this xbox even played a single game it had all these preventative measures done to it. Hopefully red rings wont be an issue down the road.