NEWS

XBOX360 Specifications

XBOX360 Three red lights of death

How to prevent the dreaded three lights of death

XBOX 360 Banned from Live

MicroSoft Admitts all XBOX are faulty

XBOX360 System Specs

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
• Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
• Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
• VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
• 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
• 1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance
• 9 billion dot product operations per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor
• 500MHz processor
• 10 MB of embedded DRAM
• 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
• Unified shader architecture

Polygon Performance
• 500 million triangles per second

Pixel Fill Rate
• 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA

Memory
• 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM
• 700 MHz of DDR
• Unified memory architecture

XBOX360 Three red lights of death

   We confirm this error is now commonly found in most XBOX360 consoles. Some says it was obvious that this sort of overheating issue was coming when you look at the specs of the XBOX360 console. It runs a IBM based three symmetrical cores running at 3.2GHz each. This is faster than most high end computer processor you find today (2007). Even more you can see the ATI Graphics processor in these units is much faster and capable of processing more polygons than the highest GPUs you find. As many see such a sophisticated machine will face overheat issues as end users see it as another component to go in their TV cabinet.

   Getting a bit technical about to why, lets have a quick view on how the GPU works.

The GPU consist of 48 ALU (Arithmetic Logic Units) as the shader data enters the GPU the sequencer takes the Vertex or pixel data that is prepared by scan converter and vertex grouper to the 48 ALUs and keep the ALUs 100% occupied. The 48 ALUs are divided into 3 groups of 16each at the final shader pipe each of the 16 ALUs can write out two samples to the 10MB EDRAM, even though it is capable of writing 32 samples per clock at 500MHz. At the peak this can perform 120 Billion Shader operations per second at 500MHz.

   As electrical signal travel through conductive and semi conductive materials it produces heat and when you look at how many electrical signals would go through the GPU at a peak calculating up to 120 Billion shader operation per second this produces massive amount of heat. Unless this heat is disposed quickly it can cause many issues as we commonly find on XBOX360 consoles. Common solder 63/37 has a melting point of 182ºC. If the temperature reaches this point the solder that is holding the GPU on to the motherboard can melt and cause de-soldering of the GPU or even short circuitry on the GPU legs. 

   Some may wonder why High end PCs custom made for Gaming does not face the same issue. Have a look at the cooling systems used in the high end PCs built for Gaming.

Compare the cooling system on the XBOX360 consoles with much more sophisticated CPU and GPU running at High speeds.

GPU Heat sink as shown bellow is no way close to what it should be to keep such a sophisticated GPU cool

Getting on to the point why do you get the three red lights of death. This error is issued because the GPU failed to respond that could be because it is partially de-soldered or partially dead because of a short circuitry caused by the solder that holds the GPU to the mother board melting.

How to fix this error

We have seen some videos on you tube how people have tried to fix this and claims successful. Unfortunately this is not going to fix the problem but make it worse. By using a heat gun they may be able to temporary get the solder in right place but the same time since they are using un controlled heat they can cause serious damage to many components on the motherboard and also the problem lies in the soldering of the GPU not the whole motherboard. Therefore by using the heat gun you could simulate the problem caused by the GPU overheating on the whole motherboard as seen on the video bellow. This remedy may get the unit to work momentarily but will have more issues than what you start with.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5nfmJTQJr8

So now we know what not to do. Beware some backyard console repairers try this to fix consoles.

The proper way of fixing this will cost a bit more than waving a heat gun. We X-Ray the BGA(Ball Grid Array) status on the GPU legs and some time we were amazed on what we have seen.

After this process we repair the BGA solder work in a SMT CONVECTION REFLOW OVEN.  In worse cases we remove the GPU and re-solder to repair this fault.

This picture shows how the GPU is removed successfully

We also found that the X clamps on the CPU and GPU heat sinks to come loose. We found this issue to be worse than lack of heat reduction measure because this results in the heat on top of the GPU and CPU risie very rapidly due to lack of heat transfer to the heat sink. This overheating can happen with only about 2 minutes of play time. Therefore as a part of the repair we re-tension the X clamps and replace the X clamp holders.

We are proud to say that we provide this service at Global Consoles but if you have already used the heat gun or paid someone to do it for you there is no chance of getting your unit to work properly again with out replacing the mother board.

How to prevent the dreaded three lights of death

We have been asked the question if this problem has been fixed in the new models of xbox360 consoles. We can not confirm or deny if this is the case but we currently have evidence of XBOX360 Elite has the same problem even with the extended heat sinks on the GPU.

Our lab results have proven that the main issue is that the 99% of the air coming through the main vent of the console goes back out through the CPU due to the ducting system in the console.

This discovery has proven that intercooler type fans that increases the airflow  through the back fans as well as some backyard operations have started connecting the back fans of the unit to 12V to increase the airflow actually do more damage than in a standard unit.

The proper solution for this issue is a 80mm fan placed in between CPU heat sink and power switch on the case of the unit with a brass ducting system that direct the air flow on to the GPU has proven to prevent this overheating happening.

We offer this modification at a cost of $85.00

 No matter what is installed in the unit if the end user does not take the right precautionary action. Unfortunately the main vent for the air to go in is at the bottom of the unit and if you stand the unit in upright position you restrict the air flow in to he unit and doing so the cooling system in the unit fails.

Therefore it is crucial to absolutely make sure you do not cover the main vent of the unit but make sure it is very well ventilated.

XBOX Live issue

Picture thanks to http://au.xbox360.ign.com

Yes Microsoft has started banning XBOX360 machines from XBOX LIVE. The mod community has confirmed that Microsoft has inserted some detection software into the latest update to detect a backup disk, yes it is not detecting a moded console but a backup disc and you playing a backup disc in  the XBOX360 machine and banning machines for this.

Xtreme 5.3 firmware has been released to combat this but for some machine it is already too late also 5.3 has not been tested and proven to be a solution yet.

Few sugestions:

• If you do not want to risk it do not go on line

• Even if you go online make sure you have no disc in drive or no backup disc

MicroSoft Admitts all XBOX are faulty

Finally MicroSoft has admitted to the XBOX360 console hardware failure is a fault in the unit. The following article has been quoted from http://www.xbox.com/en-AU/support/xbox360/warrantyupdate.htm XBOX official web site.