What a day. First my computer was running real hot and kept restarting so I took a cruise for a lil bit. Then my car temp was getting worrisome and I headed back home, pretty sure I got some air in my coolant.
Inside I proceed to fire up my xbox and on the 2nd game of NHL10, the video quality starts to get distorted and cheap looking, like a highly compressed image. I restart it and the video has completely failed but still has audio. No RROD but I am 100% positive it is the xbox itself as it’s unfortunately not uncommon.
I looked online and discovered this is due to over-heating and something about some x clamps and the heatsink needing to be replaced or to send it in to Microshaft for over $100. It wasn’t even that warm in the house…
Anyways, who is good at this stuff or can recommend me some tricks? I already did a video reset by holding right trigger and Y and switched inputs, etc.
i payed someone on ebay 25 bucks to professionally reflow my MB, its perfect now. Xclamp sometimes works, sometimes doesnt. Dont do the towell trick as it heats up components too much and you will not be able to reflow.
My out of warranty RRoD towel-tricked 360 is holding up until I can get an Arcade and rock me some hdmi. Fixing these things is a pain in the ass. This is the 2nd time for me, and it sucks. Oh well.
they put it on a professional flow machine and it reflows all the solder joints. Unless you have one at home, it can be tough since you might not know what joints are broken.
I usually replace both x-clamps, sometimes the pressure alone is enough to make a contact again, but u want to either do the towel trick, or use a heatgun on the heatsink to heat the chip enough to reflow the solder. But it’s not the safest method to use. If something besides the cpu/gpu has a bad solder joint, u can very unsafely reflow all solder connections by stripping it down to the metal housing with motherboard, and stick it in the oven for a bit, just make sure u keep a good eye on it. to get proper temperature, stick a cat in the oven with it. once the cat stops moving, you’ve reached proper reflow temperature and the xbox is done.
A buddy at work did the heat gun trick on an RRoD out of warranty console and popped most of the caps in the process. Unbelievably though it not only fixed the RRoD but the console works perfectly even with the blown caps. He’s been using it for almost a month now and it’s still going strong.
After some complaining and a threat to use the $100+ repair fee for a ps3 instead of another faulty xbox 360, their policy suddenly changed and I will be getting it repaired at no cost.
I think their call center is in Romania or something, lol.
