2 Towels, 30 Mins.. I can fix your 360 red lights!

[WazMeister]

Hi all

My brother recently got the 3 red lights, funny enough I had them too after 1 month owning the 360! Luckily I took mine back to game!

He on the other hand, could not be arsed with sorting it to send to MS.. his a scmuck.

But he just fixed it!
I asked how, he says a you tube video, 30 mins and 2 towels helped fix it.

Basicly everyone is skeptical of it and would not try it according to comments for video. But he basicled wrapped towels around his 360, turn it on to red lights and left for 45 minutes.

Turned off, took towels off and loaded fine playing for an hour last night with no trouble!

What the!

A)I presume its a temp fix.... or is it?
B)How on earth did this fix it? Melt it all! lol
C)It's madness, I thought 3 red lights meant something has actually melted... so making heat even worse would make it go to liquid.

I'm at work so can't view video or post link, but does anyone know info on this, what it does and how it makes it work again!

Thanks
Waz!

[kernow]

This is a well known trick, it just makes it overheat and re-melts the solder .. no?

lol 360

[dvdx2]

old news m8

its only a temp fix, brought mine 'back to life' for 30 mins

[toythatkills]

Maybe it was -shock- a coincidence? My 360 red lights now and then and then starts working again a while later, with no towels. I just haven't uploaded footage to Youtube

[babs]

The three red lights happens because the board gets so hot that the solder holidng the gpu (I think) in melts. It has a custom 'X' spring clip holding the heatsink on, but the spring is so strong it bends the board away from the chip so the connecting pins pull out.

I can only assume this trick heated the solder up to a comparable level and somehow let the board warp back to make proper contact again.

I can't see it being permanent, because the hazard is still there, but I don't know enough to say for certain either way. Most of the DIY fixes I've seen involve replacing the heatsink and clips for a normal screw-type affair.

edit: damn, I have to be faster replying!

[dannywhac]

Yep - the towel trick is very temporary....as said, it 're-warps' the m'board to make contact again with the (most likley) offending GPU contacts. The x-clamps in the 360 clamp from the middle of the chip allowing the m'board to warp along the outside of the GPU creating broken solder joints.

The only permanent fix is to replace the x-clamps with 8 4X20mm nuts/bolts and washers so the heatsinks over the GPU and CPU are acting more like a PC's heatsinks - they clamp from the outside of the heatsink remaking the contacts on the GPU/CPU. However the main problem is still heat - you need to replace the fans with better ones, add a heatshroud divider, and dremel out the metal case at the rear of the console where the fans expel air.

Out of all the 360's I've fixed, the least likely to be able to be repaired have been the ones that someones tried the towel trick on - they generally after a short while throw up a 0020 error and then die permenantly

[WazMeister]

urr

Blimey, Thanks for great infO!

So basicly we all got to buy a 3rd party fan to make the 360 not break?
Monsterous!

If you guys know this much, surely MS techi would redesign or get other parts to prevent this happining?

Even new version consoles get red lights, my friends new developed date 360 got it too..

Madness.

So should I buy one of them external fan adaptors for mine to be on safe side?

Ive had 3 red lights once already.

[kernow]

I avoided the problem by never owning a 360 in my life.. win!

[WazMeister]

What makes me laugh if this was years ago, it be all over the place recalls the lot.

MS condemned for it etc.

These days things like this are let off too easy, espcailly seeing its a mass market problem and still consisting.

Just think of PS1 or SNES had this back in days, they be invetigated the lot!

My 2 cents anway... things are not like they used to anymore... not enough integrity with companies.

[dannywhac]

I avoided the problem by never owning a 360 in my life.. win!

Now now TreKernow.......

Buying external fans is a good idea - better just to keep the 'box in a well ventilated area and hope to be honest - I've still got a release box that runs ok bar that its got a sammy drive whose laser doesn't like some of the levels on Halo 3...

[WazMeister]

How well is well?

Mines under my desk with the brick next to it.

Nothing behind apart from a support beam of desk and on sides, but has gaps all around for air to escape.

[dannywhac]

How well is well?

Mines under my desk with the brick next to it.

Nothing behind apart from a support beam of desk and on sides, but has gaps all around for air to escape.

Should be fine - generally keep it horizontal with enough space around it (especially at the rear of the console) - I've got it sat on wooden lats so air can circulate underneath n' all (try a 2 hour session then feel the underneath of the console beneath the dvd drive - thats were the GPU is located). But, as is the design of the console, you'll have a 30% chance of it borking still

[Ertay]

Put it in the freezer! *evil cackle*

Ok lets be serious now . I have a Premium console which is totaly broken now. I got the three red lights hmmm after 5 months or something, and sent it for repairing, after the repair, it lasted for like 3 weeks, and I got the silly One red light error, error code E74. Sent it for repairing, the guy that repairs it said the console can't be repaired, and now I get three lights again. I bought an Arcade one now, so I'm thinking of what to do to keep it safe or something. But honestly, how the hell they can't come up with a bloody solution, Im talking about MS.

[fahrenheit]

The 360 is RoHS compliant, which is to say, it uses a type of solder that is free from lead. Lead solder had one advantage in that it was a lot less brittle than the solder found in the 360. It can stretch and constrict as the console heats and cools.

This brittle lead-free solder combined with the warping of the motherboard (thanks to the flawed x-clamp design) is a recipe for disaster. When a leg on one of the chips breaks due to stress, we are talking about a hairline fracture, barely visible to the naked eye. All the towel trick is doing is creating enough internal heat to warp the board further, so that the hairline fracture can once again make contact. There is no way for it to generate enough heat for the solder to reflow, this is a complete myth.

Prevention is one of the best methods to keep this situation at bay.
Its the heating up and subsequent cooling down of the console that creates the stress that leads to a solder joint fracture. Minimising the ramp up and ramp down of heat is the first line of defense and its also something you can do cheaply and without voiding your warranty.

Firstly, raise the console up so that the underside vents can draw in air. The concave design does very little in this regard. Some rubber door stoppers on the four corners is perfect.

Secondly and more importantly, get a play and charge kit and plug it in after every session and then shutdown. This will stop all thermal activity from the GPU, CPU and RAM chips, but it will keep the fans running and will ensure that hot air continues to get vented long after all thermal activity has ceased. Kind of like a turbo timer in a car.
Its my belief that when you switch the console off after a session, that this is the most dangerous time due to the fans shutting down too. At the point of shutdown, the heatsinks/chips are carrying their maximum load of heat and they are suddenly forced to passively cool down without the aid of the fans, so that heat gets transferred back to the board and warping is the result. Its why its all too common for people to find RROD the next day, rather than in the middle of a session.

Of course not everyone's going to agree with the above, but you can't really argue the harm in doing it. Keeping the fans running after shutdown is a good thing. You can feel with your hand that the temperature has become cooler after just 20 minutes of charging. By the time the charging has stopped and the fans have switched off, the console is at a nice safe level for passive cooling to take care of the rest.

Whether or not this method goes far enough to prolong RROD for longer than the average is anyones guess, but for the little hassle it takes, I'm happy enough to do it.

[Bada Bing!]

See I've been wasting using a soldering iron to fix motherboards when I could have been using household linen...