Woohoo! XBOX360 in my hands! 6 hours later it crashes...
 

Bugger bugger bugger :( Finally got my 360 yesterday (Cos I was away on business for the week and couldn't get it Friday :() and playing on NFS and PGR3 for 6 hours. Then all of a sudden.... black and white screen.

Oh well I think. It's a MS product, reboot! And now on the ray of light or whatever the feck they call it instead of being nice green, it has 3 red lights going anti clockwise with the top right one not being illuminated.

No more XBox for me.... It just won't load again.

Rang Microsoft, they don't know the fault and 10 working days time I should have my new one.

Poo :(

SYMPTOMS
You see three lights on the Ring of Light flash red on the front of the Xbox 360 console. The upper-right quadrant light is the only light that does not flash red.

CAUSE
This behavior occurs when the Xbox 360 console experiences a hardware failure.

THINGS TO TRY
1. Restart the console.
2. If that does not resolve the issue, unplug all the cables from the console, and then firmly plug the cables in.
3. Have the customer power-off the console, remove the hard disk drive, and then turn on the console.
• If the 3x Red LED error light is no longer displayed, have the customer turn-off the console, re-attach the hard disk drive, and then turn on the console.
4. If you continue to experience this behavior, contact Xbox Customer Support.

Heard it can be the power supply that overheats after 6-7 hours :(
Feel they released this a little earlier than they should have, give it 6 months to iron all the bugs out ;)

Tony

Cheers Wah :)

Still no joy though. I only got the core system so no harddisk to remove.

Power supply was in open area, cos I was got it, found the plug free was at the opposite side of the room, and ran it across the floor :D Excitement and all that ;)

Oh well, as they say it happens. New XBox coming but no power supply, just the XBox.... Hope thats all what it is.

I was on mine for about 12 hours on Friday, and didn't suffer any problems at all with overheating or anything else. I have got the power supply on a shelf though (not on the carpet). This could help keep it cooler I suppose. I know that it neve once got hot to the touch (just vaguely warm).

Good luck with the replacement.. :)

Anybody else noticed that some of the ventilation holes on the console have not been punched out... Noticed it last night on mine, there are about a dozen of the holes that are solid...

It's not affecting mine but might be worth checking your consoles... I also heard that having the power supply on the carpet can cause overheating....

Unbelievable! You think MS would of taken this into account wouldn't you :) Or have all homes in US got wooden/hard floors or something :lol1:

Not really unbelievable, just common sense really.

Any computer hardware of this sort of power is going to generate a lot of heat, and that heat has got to be gotten rid of somehow. If you snuggle the power supply down in a nice comfy bit of carpet then it will not be able to get rid of the heat as quickly, (the carpet will act as an insulator), and so the chances of it overheating are increased. Also, carpets are generally dusty places, the power supply has a fan in it sucking in air. Youd basically be turning your power supply into a vacumn cleaner. Not a good idea...

As a note of interest, the power supplies for both my laptops (one Alienware and one Dell) have exactly the same instructions / restrictions.

Clocked up 30+ hours on mine now, and no sign of overheating, or even getting overly warm on mine. Power supply is sat on a shelf behind my AV amp :)

are they made of chocolate like subaru engines :D

Please, I've never come across any console/laptop PSU that doesn't work, fails or overheats on a feckin carpet! It's a design fault, period! As you say, they obviously haven't allowed for the heat to be dispersed out of it properly.

You've obviously never use an Alienware laptop then. I have to make a point of not putting the psu on the carpet, as you could fry an egg on it if you do. Same with my Dell psu...

Dell yes, alienware no.

Don't you hoover very often then? :)

Yes I do :p

is this the same as pcs? if ive got my pc on the carpet (tho psu at top of tower) will it be increasing the overall internal temp? ive got several old P2 heatsinks i could sit the pc on :D

Yeh with PCs case cooling is critical so yes I would raise it off the carpet. I don't think a few heatsinks would be high enough though :) Just monitor your temps in the bios or with motherboard monitor, if the cpu temp is below 45-50C on idle and no more than 60C on load, I wouldnt worry though. Case/mobo temps sbe in the 20-30C bracket.

Which is also why it's critical with the 360 psu, as it's essentially a pc psu in a smaller case :)

Not denying that. MS should have taken this into account though, as it's pretty obvious the majority of PSUs would spend most of their lives on carpets. Are there any recommendations in the manual about taking precautions with the PSU?

Agreed, they should've designed it better as most people wil lhave it sitting on the carpet, I would have no choice to place it on the carpet, other than building some sort of holder for it to sit off the floor, which seems a bit extreme for a console. :)

its these dodgy taiwanese again, like the xbox power cord problem...

Not got the manual with me here at work, but if I remember correctly then yes it has, (as it also has with the console itself).

Out of interest, how would you lot have designed it then?

The psu needs to provide a large amount of power to the console, (seeing as the console needs just as much juice as a high-spec pc), and so will generate a lot of heat. Off the top of my head I can see a few options...

1) Make the psu twice the size and integrate better cooling into it. Perhaps a water cooled heat sink?

2) Have the psu inside the console itself, making the console at least twice the size that it is at present.

3) Reduce the power of the console so that it doesn't require as much power.

There may be others, but for life of me I can't think of a better solution than what MS have actually shipped...

yeah played mine all day friday no problems, managed to let the young one have a play a couple of hours later on gun and it crashed 4 times, restarted and worked okay eventually

Typical ugly PC features, my Powerbook has a single tiny power supply that plugs directly into the wall. :)

For pure simplicity, they could have just included a PSU stand, just a simple 4 legged stand that would lift it off the floor. Not very attractive, but at least it would solve the cooling issue.

The whole 360 launch smells of Christmas rush to me :rolleyes:

i thought i read they were going to water cool it or was that the ps3? if the ps3 wasnt going to im sure they will now

....my Xbox (not the 360) broke 2 months back, called Xbox support, they collected it, repaired it and returned it in 3 days (quoted me 14 days turnaround) - far better support service than any other product I've ever bought.

So, although your 360 has a problem, you should get it sorted relatively quickly, I would have thought.

Neil

The 360 is liquid cooled....

One of the surprises we found when checking the Xbox 360 innards was its cooling solution. To keep things quiet and cool, Microsoft has designed a liquid cooling system that dynamically adjusts the flow of the liquid and the speed of the fans depending on the temperature and power consumption.

This intelligent approach has allowed Microsoft to build smaller console by removing the traditional heatsinks found in most computer and replacing them with a combination of fans and liquid cooling. This combo is more efficient and keeps the processor at a lower temperature than the original Xbox, which is a remarkable achievement considering the higher clock speeds and power consumption that the new Xbox 360 hardware has in comparison with the old console.

Aren't you supposed to flush liquid cooled systems to clear out the gunky deposits that appear over time?

First I've heard of that. If they are filled with the right sort of liquid and ar sealed properly, there should be no deposit build up.

Out of interested, did you know that the 360 isn't the first console to be liquid cooled. The Dreamcast used it as well, and mine is still running perfectly well without even having had to be flushed :)

No I didn't know that ;)

I only asked as I looked into water cooling my PC at one point but saw the wonderful fish tank effect where it would gunk up with kak and needed flushing. I thought it was something to do with the heat providing a nice breeding ground for organisms. Probably with it being a home setup with not perfectly sterile water setup in a non-sterile environment wouldn't help much :D

It was enough to put me off water cooled PCs anyway ;)