Our Halo 3 edition (Elite) Xbox went RROD about three months ago. The wife looked into sending it to Microshaft, but they wanted $100 due to it being beyond the RROD extended warranty (over 3 years old). I searched the interwebs looking for fixes and mods that made sense to me. This is the process I used today to correct the failure.
First off, was the Arctic Silver 5 and reflow, while retaining original x clamps. I reflowed by powering the unit on with the fans unplugged, and waited till it flashed the two left red lights to indicate an overheat.
Second was bypassing the PWM'd transistor for the exhaust fans. This was to supply the 12v fans with constant 12v rather than an average of 5.4v. Ignore the red line. The yellow line depicts the jumper from the 12v leg of the transistor to the positive post on the fan header. the two outer posts are soldered to the same trace and powered by the same transistor. I used a lead sourced from a resistor. I went this way, rather than tapping into the DVD drive power because i read that tapping could lead to glitchy dvd operation and possible Live banning. On a side note, I believe the ban would be due to intermittent power to the DVD looking like a DVD delete to Microshaft, rather than out of spec power consumption. Sorry a did not take pics, and had to borrow from the net.
Next, I soldered leads with a two post female plug to the underside of the mobo at the power header. I re-purposed an old two post header for the fan connector. The 50mm Cooler Master fan was mounted on top of the remote GPU heat sink. The wires were ran up the right side of the exhaust cowling and under the mobo at the base of the exhaust fan.
Heat sinks are originally more passive than anything. I applied aluminum tape to the tops of the main heat sinks and bridged the gaps between the cowling and sinks. This pic shows a poorer version of my tape job. Red and blue lines depict the power lead routing for auxiliary fan.
I was limited to internal mods due to the unit being Halo 3 edition and not wanting change the appearance. After finally assembling the Xbox, the wife and I played multi-player Halo 3 and 1 for 1 hour with no issues.
First off, was the Arctic Silver 5 and reflow, while retaining original x clamps. I reflowed by powering the unit on with the fans unplugged, and waited till it flashed the two left red lights to indicate an overheat.
Second was bypassing the PWM'd transistor for the exhaust fans. This was to supply the 12v fans with constant 12v rather than an average of 5.4v. Ignore the red line. The yellow line depicts the jumper from the 12v leg of the transistor to the positive post on the fan header. the two outer posts are soldered to the same trace and powered by the same transistor. I used a lead sourced from a resistor. I went this way, rather than tapping into the DVD drive power because i read that tapping could lead to glitchy dvd operation and possible Live banning. On a side note, I believe the ban would be due to intermittent power to the DVD looking like a DVD delete to Microshaft, rather than out of spec power consumption. Sorry a did not take pics, and had to borrow from the net.
Next, I soldered leads with a two post female plug to the underside of the mobo at the power header. I re-purposed an old two post header for the fan connector. The 50mm Cooler Master fan was mounted on top of the remote GPU heat sink. The wires were ran up the right side of the exhaust cowling and under the mobo at the base of the exhaust fan.
Heat sinks are originally more passive than anything. I applied aluminum tape to the tops of the main heat sinks and bridged the gaps between the cowling and sinks. This pic shows a poorer version of my tape job. Red and blue lines depict the power lead routing for auxiliary fan.
I was limited to internal mods due to the unit being Halo 3 edition and not wanting change the appearance. After finally assembling the Xbox, the wife and I played multi-player Halo 3 and 1 for 1 hour with no issues.
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