Xbox 360 – three red lights of death

XBOX 360 – Three Red Lights of Death Repair Manual
Brought to you today by: iFriends

Contents
1. Reasons why this works 2. Getting prepared 3. Opening the case 4. Removing the motherboard 5. Removing and preparing the heat sinks 6. Fixing the heat sinks 7. Check point 1! 8. Check point 2! 9. Other tips and tricks

Reasons why this works.
When Microsoft designed the 360, they chose aslightly unusual way of mounting the heat sinks to the processors. When the console is running, there is a tremendous amount of heat build up inside the case. This causes the motherboard to flex against the X-Clamp support plastic (see picture 1) which in turn can cause the soldered joints on the processors to come away from the motherboard itself. This results in the Red Lights of Death. Due to theinefficient design of the heat sink clamping method, this is a very large problem. Although Microsoft haven’t (as of yet) come up with a decent design fix. On the latest ‘Elite’ versions of the console they have used epoxy resin to ‘glue’ the corners of the processors down to stop the flexing that causes this error (see picture 2). Whether their fix will stand the test of time remains to be seen.What the modification contained in this manual achieves is to alleviate board flexing and apply uniform pressure to the processors. This uniform pressure is enough to ‘remake’ the faulty joints resulting in a working console. Also, because the pressure on the processors is uniform the heat sinks do a much better job of dissipating the heat build up.

Getting prepared
To perform thismodification, you require some tools and some specific screws and washers. If you have purchased this document as part of the repair kit, you will have everything you need to perform this modification. Item Qty Req Cost Each Total T8 Torx Screwdriver 1x £3.00 T10 Torx Screwdriver 1x £3.00 5mm Flat washers (B&Q avf-064968) 1x £1.30 5mm x0.8x10 machine screws (B&Q avf-069918) 1x £1.30 Arctic Silver ThermalCompound 1x £4.50 Thin Terminal Screwdriver 1x £1.00 Wooden Skewer or similar (must be THIN) 1x £0.50 Prices are for guidance only. Your mileage may vary – you can purchase sets of Torx screwdrivers for about £10.00. Do not substitute the screws/washers with a different brand or size. The size of these is crucial for the modification to work as intended.

Opening the case
Firstly, remove thefront face plate from your Xbox: Take a look at the front of the Xbox 360 and insert your thumb into the door that covers the two USB ports on the right of the unit. With your other hand squeezing the upper and lower sides of the face plate, pull out the face plate with your thumb. With not much effort, the face plate should come away from the unit with ease. I wouldn’t force it however –if itdoesn’t want to come off easily it will be catching on something. You don’t want a trashed console case after all your efforts.

After the face plate has been pulled off you will see a silver Microsoft sticker covering both halve of the case; remove this – goodbye warranty! There are four clips locking the top half of the case to the bottom half. Do not attempt to wedge the clips out at this point, weneed to remove both grey plastic endplates first. With care, gently bend outwards, the right grey ventilation shield on the right side of the unit so that you can see a bit inside. You will notice that the grey side piece attaches to both the bottom and top white chassis. Look through the holes on top of the unit to locate the areas where the grey side pieces attaches to the white housing. Whatyou need to do is take the thin skewer and push down, through the white holes (located on both the top and bottom of the Xbox 360) where the clips of the grey side pieces connect. Slowly pull out the grey pieces away from the unit while unlocking the clips and eventually it will release itself. You will find that once the first couple of clips are released the rest come away quite easily. You...