RROD fix attempt
 

One of my members of staff was given an xbox 360 a few weeks ago, the previous owner was a friend of his who had originally bought it new for his son, but it had developed an over heating fault, it apparently ran for a few mins and then froze.

After taking my office 360 apart a few weeks back to tweak the lasers pot (dirty disc error fix) i felt confident enough to pull his apart and have a look at sorting a quick RROD fix with the help of the internet.

After looking at the case today, it was obvious that somebody had already been at the thing as the case was a bit mullered around the back end.

The unti did boot up, and you could start a game, but it would soon freeze (no RROD)

I was expecting the thing to have been flashed :( and therfore banned from live, today was the last day my final member of staff was working as i am closing down the business next week, and i was hoping to keep in touch with him via xbox live, he loved playing on the office 360 and had started turning into a gamerscore whore :D with the live profile i setup for him.

Initial disassemble had me scratching my head.

Why does this xbox have thermal pads stuck on these chips? they dont touch anything :cuckoo:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/10...231_115009.jpg

I have only took apart 1 xbox previous, my spare/office 360 is a later design board, but still, summit not right `ere :eek:

I turned the motherboard over

WHAT THE **** IS THIS?!?!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/10...231_113345.jpg

It appears to have burnt/heat damaged red electical tape covering something :confused: :nono: :wonder:

Lets, er, peel this off.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/10...231_114621.jpg

WTF are these ??

Little red taped pillows of ghetto-mod, at this point i take it outside to show davey "umm davey this things been butchered to hell, do you want me to look deeper" "wtf are those things?" "**** knows!"

So i cut one open.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/10...231_115812.jpg

Little squares of (badly) cut copper wrapped in tape and super glued to the chips underneath :lol: :wonder:

At this point i was totally miffed, seriously wtf? i removed all the bodged crap, cleaned the chips up as best as i could i stuck the 4 thermal pads from the other side of the mobo back into the correct place on these butchered chips, removed the xclamp heatsinks to find no paste at all :Suspiciou and then explained to davey that i think he should punt this xbox on via ebay as RROD spares or repair and hopefully get £40 back towards a new machine.

The young kid has blatantly had a go at "fixing" it via some utter bollocks posted on some random forum :lol1: :cuckoo:

Thats a penny fix mod.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3GLB...eature=related

I wont be surprised if they even tried the towel trick to cook the xbox in a attempt to fix it.


Ive fixed nearly a dozen RROD's with stripping down the heatsinks and repasting them.
Then using the screw/bolt method.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuIl0kGf7dM


There not that hard to fix if you catch them early enough.
They will fail again, could be weeks or months but they are failing motherboards.

How does this "penny fix" work?

I can not see how the attempt on this xbox would do anything at all except make things worse :cuckoo:

I am actually planning on sorting the xclamps out on both my working machines before they break down, just never got around to buying the parts.

get it working and trade it in a newer one :D

It doesn't look too different to the PS3 I took apart. the clamps are just not x-clamps in that.

That has been taken apart and butchered. Even the penny mod was not meant to be put together with sh1tty brown tape.

The penny is stuck to the memory chips and its meant to act as a heatsink.
The thermal pads stuck to the top by Microsoft are meant to act as a heatsink as well.


You can prolong the life of the xbox 360 by doing a few simple things.

Have the xbox lying down, not standing up.
Load your games to the hard drive, instead of running from dvd drive.
Keep in a well ventilated area.
Once in while take the hoover to the air vents to stuck out the dust.

This part will void your warrenty,
You can replace the stock fan and fit a whisper fan.
Remove the metal sheet stuck to the inside of the top part of the shell.



When you do the re-pasting, dont be tempted to use cheap thermal paste.
Try and get the proper silver thermal paste, as Ive had more succees with it.
Ive found the cheap stuff only lasts for a few weeks and the silver paste lasts for a few months.

the penny trick is a waste of time, the ram pretty much never has problems. The only way to fix it 100% is to reball the GPU and CPU, which is expensive and probably not worth the effort for most people. I reflow the GPU and CPU with a hot air station, modify the stands on which the mainboard sits (there not always flat, so the board bends) and fit one of these http://dynamods.com/xbox-360/onderde.../prod_521.html so far 100% success rate on about 50 boxes, PM me if you need more info or help oh and what slipstream says about thermal paste is bang on the money

As drifter has said, the penny trick is a waste of time. As is any other 'repair' other than reballing or reflowing the cpu/gpu.
I remove the Xclamps, slow bake the board and then reflow using flux, the area which requires it.
(Determined by the secondary error code.)
There are often problems with the ram i'm afraid, they too are prone to cold solder joints.

The only time you cannot fix the mainboard with any of the above methods is if the board has suffered such severe thermal flexing..a trace has been damaged beyond repair.

I run a small console repair company and have repaired 100's of 360's, ps3's and wii's.

I apologise that this is my first post but i'm on here to purchase my first impreza by the end of next month and stumbled accross this thread!

Hi to you all anyway!

Hi, crazy gary welcome to the board !
do you replace the xclamps at all ?, there design is pretty shocking if you ask me, to much uneven pressure spread. Im surprised you have problems with ram chips, iv literally had one ram problem out out god knows how many repairs. What temp are you baking at if you dont mind me asking ?

Hi, I bin the xclamps completely and replace with the usual kits you see advertised.
Just ensure nylon washers are used against the board and I also use a spring washer on the underside.
The reason for baking is to get rid of moisture from the solder joints and straighten any flexing before reflow with flux. I usually bake on gas mark 1 overnight for xenon, less for Newer revisions. There's always lots of controversy but these temps and timings work great for me.

This method may be longwinded but it gets me great results with no return repairs.
I charge £40 for this service and perform it regular. (shameless plug lol)

cant see how you could re-flow at gas mark 1, that's about 150 degrees, the lead free solder used on most bga's has a re-flow temp of about 240 degrees ? guess your just getting lucky :) Im an electronics engineer by trade so lucky enough to have access to some very nice equipment

I think you have misunderstood me.
I don't reflow in the oven!!

The oven is used BEFORE i reflow.
As you will know, it's pointless reflowing solder if it contains moisture.

That is the only reason i bake the boards first and of course, to straighten the board after any flexing caused by the xclamps. :)

lol, yeah think i did ! i use a board preheater but never bother with baking. Its not the solder that contains the moisture btw its the substrate of the bga's, not realy found it to be a problem on 360's myself but have seen some very bent boards, maybe il add to my list of things todo :)

i did towell trick for RROD and it worked ............. for 2 weeks then went again

flogged it and got a new style one, Much better quiet as a mouse

towell trick...lol cant believe anyone one actually try that !

I know but it was red hot and it actually worked sold it on ebay for 60 quid

Well i brought home my old office X360, it is a bit battered and brused, sometimes the disc does not read, and it has had extended time switched on while at work (sometimes it has been on for 8-10 hours at a time)

This machine was repaired by MS under warranty before i bought it for RROD, but as i had to take it apart to tweak the laser i got to see inside, it has the extra little heatpipe/sink on it, still with the bloody xclamps.

First things first, i tweaked the laser, jobs a gooden and the machine worked for 2 weeks with no issues, then i figured that while it was working fine, i would do the "xclamp fix" to prevent any future problems, while changing the entire case for a new one (i chose a nice glossy red one :D )

And now its bloody broke :rolleyes: not sure what went wrong, i used nylon washers from a proper kit, i switch it on and it gives me a RROD, the secondary error code is 0002

I removed the xclamp kit, double checked it and refitted it, no joy at all, this machine was working before i changed the heatsinks, so either i got pretty unlucky, or i buggered it up :rolleyes:

Not had another chance to play with it again yet, i spent a few hours the other night and called it a night, i was super careful removing the xclamps, i have had them off before anyway for a nosey about and had no issues :(

Just picked up another cheap xbox on ebay for £46 delivered no RROD on this one, but the chap reckons it will not accept an XBL update, so he can not play multiplayer, hope its not banned.

The plan was to sort this spare 360 out and refurbish it, then once comfortable doing the work i was going to xclamp fix my main elite machine before that one fails.

guarantee that'll be a banned box

We shall have to wait and see, it mentions nothing in the advert about being flashed or tinkered with.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...=STRK:MEWNX:IT

Clicking the feedback link shows a picture of a girl, hopefully she is just a bit dumb :D

pull the faceplate off and check the warranty label is fine :thumb:

It should be fine going by the advert. Just download the full update from microsoft website and install from a usb stick. It's a better model xbox than your previous one anyway.... it has a falcon board with larger heatsinks judging by the power lead.

Unless you see the plug close up, its impossible to say if its an updated machine, my moneys on it being a banned console too

Mart

I don't need to see it close up. It's a falcon board.

I doubt its banned either. But I suppose what does it matter?

The one I broke had the extra heat sink.

Downloaded the update a few days ago, will update on what happens when its delivered.

Delivered today.

First things first, pulled off the faceplate, intact security seal :)

Switched on to find it is one of the arcade models with the built in 512mb memory, which is full to the brim with a failed COD WAW download :lol1:

Deleted that and the gamer profile that was still on the machine, inserted the USB with the update on, and then watched with glee as it updated with no issues.

Connected to Xbox live and everything is spot on :smug:

The only problem i have is that i had bought a nice swish metalic red facia/case to pimp up the old machine, and the new one has HDMI so the ports dont line up :mad:

Might need to tweak the cutouts at the back, its a shame as the case looks superb.

Good news :thumb: Silly girl:lol1:

Couldn't help but gloat a little as i left her good feedback :)

Now if i can shift my older RROD machine on ebay for the £20 to £30 they seam to go for, i will be smug as hell :lol1:

Not sure if i should do the xclamp fix to my elite model though in the living room, like my old office machine i have just mullered :rolleyes: there is no fault with it at the moment, prevention is apparently better than cure, but not in my case so far :lol1:

FWIW the new one has HDMI, a bigger cpu heatsink and the 150watt psu :)
So it is a jasper? :smug:

Check out the link below

All will be revealed :)

http://www.se7ensins.com/forums/topi...wer-connector/


Btw Elete's came with the Xenon/Zepher mobo's, and they still die!!

Mart

If it has the smaller psu then it's the jasper :D