oXbox 80mm LED Cooling Fan Mod (Pics & Materials Needed)

[Jagosaurus]

oXbox 80mm LED Cooling Fan Mod (Pics & Materials Needed):

Hello all, I recently bought an oXbox with the intentions of soft modding it and upgrading the HDD. Well, add one more mod to that list. The OEM fan was DOA . There are a lot of guides out there. I'll spare you repeating those, but will list the tools I used and share pics.

Edit 12/11/2016: Here is a great YouTube tutorial by TechnoOnTop (link) for this mod if you need a step by step or visual.

Oh yeah... get ready for 7 sexy fan pics Overall, a nice mod for under $6. Happy to answer any questions. Worth noting, once soft modded you can control fan speeds and check temps.

Quick Summary
You will need to modify 4 items with the Dremel: the fan itself, the disc drive bay, the HDD bay, the outter casing lid screw pilot. Optional to modify is the RF cage with wire cutters (see pic below). Estimated time, 1 hour if already familiar with oXbox tear down.

Tools Needed:
Dremel with plastic/metal cutting saw
Torx 15
Torx 20
Flat head screw driver
Wire Cutters
Hot Glue Gun
Edit: of course wear safety Google when cutting

Fan Model:
Kentek KT-008LF ($5.39 shipped on ebay as of 10-30-16!)

Board with HDD and Disc Drive removed, stock 72mm fan in back right:



It's alive!!! Now is a good time to test the new fan and see which way air flows if not marked. Tired re-seating the OEM fan with no luck. Notice the RF cage behind where the fan previously sat:


Cut the RF shielding/security cage adjacent to the outter plastic air vents to allow more air flow:


Quite a bit larger as you can see. The fan itself on the bottom is actually already cut/dremel-ed down in this photo:


After modding the HDD bay and Disc Drive bay, piece it back together. Man, Microsoft really crammed a PC into this box:


And we're in business!!!


Sexy!!! In all seriousness, easy to see when the fan is active due to LEDs.


On to the softmod!

[nightrnr]

That's beautiful!
Puts to shame my PS2 fan replace:

http://rs1118.pbsrc.com/albums/k608/nig ... 0&fit=clip

It's not supposed to look pretty; this was a Goodwill salvage and is my beater/test system. One day I might try to wire it internally, instead of using the usb port, or combine it with another semi-working system.
I used the 3rd wire from the fan to tie/secure the fan in place. It is sooo... what's the right term, ghetto, redneck, crappy? But it works.

Feel free to laugh,
And thanks for the Xbox tutorial. I may want to refer to it someday.

[Jagosaurus]

That's beautiful!
Puts to shame my PS2 fan replace:

http://rs1118.pbsrc.com/albums/k608/nig ... 0&fit=clip

It's not supposed to look pretty; this was a Goodwill salvage and is my beater/test system. One day I might try to wire it internally, instead of using the usb port, or combine it with another semi-working system.
I used the 3rd wire from the fan to tie/secure the fan in place. It is sooo... what's the right term, ghetto, redneck, crappy? But it works.

Feel free to laugh,
And thanks for the Xbox tutorial. I may want to refer to it someday.

Thanks! Fun project. I'm normally not very flashy, but I am surprised how much I dig the blue LEDs.

As an update, I did get UnleasedX running (will likely start an entire Q&A/experience thread for the softmod soon). I have no idea what temperature the system was running at with no fan as it would turn off too quick to get the softmod installed, and I was worried about damaging it. I have no true temp reading to measure against, but I saw a post saying the oXbox will turn itself off at 71 degrees Celsius. If that is true, we're looking at an 18 degrees Celsius (32.4 degrees Fahrenheit) drop as it seems to be at 53 Celsius now (comparing no fan to fan at 100%).

With the new 80mm fan running at 100% (5x) versus the stock 20% (1x) the CPU is running 7 to 11 degrees Celsius cooler (12.6 to 19.8 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler. This model fan is still very quiet at 5x.

Hey, the USB fan works!!! All that counts. My PS2 fan is still rolling. When I boot the HDD in OPL the HDD and fan are screaming. Assuming the OS bumps up the fan speed automatically when it sees the HDD active. I've never looked at what is involved in replacing the PS2 fan internally, but the oXbox wasn't bad.

[nightrnr]

Yeah, I think my Xboxes are 50-60 degrees C most of the time once it warms up.

So the hard part is over for you.
How did you get the save file on your xbox to mod?
If you want to save all that info for a new topic, that's okay too.
Make sure to back up that eprom, and when you FTP, that should be the 1st thing that you back up (but I'd backup the whole C and E drives if you have the room, as that will help when you upgrade the HDD.

I'll have to post pics of my eprom reader (it's pretty basic, like my fan mod, but again, works like a charm.

[jay_red]

Looks pretty sweet, but should have gone with a green fan

[Jagosaurus]

Yeah, I think my Xboxes are 50-60 degrees C most of the time once it warms up.

So the hard part is over for you.
How did you get the save file on your xbox to mod?
If you want to save all that info for a new topic, that's okay too.
Make sure to back up that eprom, and when you FTP, that should be the 1st thing that you back up (but I'd backup the whole C and E drives if you have the room, as that will help when you upgrade the HDD.

I'll have to post pics of my eprom reader (it's pretty basic, like my fan mod, but again, works like a charm.

@nightrnr, I have a few older USB sticks laying around so I went the xbox Controller port to female USB adapter method vs xbox Controller to PC.

Essentially plug the blank USB into controller port 2, let the xbox format it, run xplorer360 on PC, transfer over relevant SID 5.11 files to USB, plug USB back into xbox, move files from USB to xbox HDD, start up exploit game (007 in my case).

In soft mod deluxe installer, I did an EPROM & MS backup. So assuming I can just move them over to my PC now via FTP? Good tip. Already have a compatible 160GB IDE HDD ready for that upgrade!

Plan on trying FTP soon. Hoping it goes without a hitch. Thinking this thread will be different than my PS2 thread & more of a "So my oXbox is soft modded - now what?" topic versus starting from scratch like I did on the PS2.


@Jay red, I know! I saw another guide where the guy used this exact model so I knew it fit. Kentek made a green at some point but all I could find was blue & red. The green ones on ebay looked super sketchy from Hong Kong went with the safe bet on the cheap.

[Jagosaurus]

Okay nightrnr, FTP working great. Just tested. Transferred over Neo Genesis emu with a couple ROMS & a .avi movie. Both moved over with no issues in FileZilla & ran perfect. Going to dig into HDD upgrade more now. May kick of a dedicated thread with that portion now that I think about it.

[nightrnr]

Awesome! You are moving right along then.
For formatting a bigger HDD, you'll want a program called "Xboxhdm" (Xbox Hard Drive Maker). It should come with a "Make iso" program, to make a boot disc to start up your pc with the right program (idealy, you will also be copying your c and e drives and eeprom to this disc).
Read and preferably print out the guide for that, as there are a few options to navigate when you get there.

Then it gets a little tricky; you will have to connect your new xbox HDD to your pc (actual motherboard via pc cable). Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if newer pc's have an ide connector anymore, but you could always get an ide to sata converter.

Then boot your cdr and follow the guide.

Good luck. You've come this far, so I think you got this.

[s8n]

nice mod and photos Jag , thanks for sharing