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30 Percent Failure Rate for the 360
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 26th June 2007
The new heatsink may have improved reliability a bit, but the 360 still has a bad reputation among retailers and users.
A manager at an Australian EB Games store recently spoke up about the issue, though he/she wisely chose to remain anonymous in an attempt to avoid The Eye of Gates;
"We are definitely getting faulty hardware returns of the Xbox 360, but nowhere near as much as we used to when it first came out," he/she said. "On initial launch, it was close to 30 per cent of our 360s were coming back faulty".
Another Sydney-based retailer gave a similar report;
"Out of the Nintendo Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360, the Microsoft product is the only one that we have had constant problems with. In fact when we sell the Xbox 360 we tell customers to contact Microsoft if they "Ever have a problem".
"At one stage we were getting calls everyday however this has slowed down. The failure rate must be well over 30 percent which when you look at a PC or iPod the failure rate is less than 2 percent."
No doubt the new heatsink which has secretly added to repaired console is doubtlessly behind the drop in repairs as the Xbox 360 was notoriously prone to heating issues and gamers had been driven to all sorts of methods in order to solve the problem.
Ever had a problem with your 360? Let us know about it in the forums, which are delightfully fan-boy free!
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Comments (48)Stats: 0.140 seconds
And that Scottish company may be a bit cheaper (£50 vs £70) but I'd rather send my console to MS and have them give me a new 12 month warranty with it, rather than the 6 months you get from GT.
I am not a sony fanboy b4 anyone starts on me.....(PC, 360, DS Lite)
Not happy at all... :(
To fight the other side though and having cracked my 360 open, its understandable in terms of design why some fail. I'll assume that when developing it, they don't have a living room mockup to trial test units instead they're probably working in a air conditioned temperature controlled room. Living rooms are'nt normally like that (certainly not in the UK). I'm not an expert but the original heatsink does seem a little inadequate. Also having only 2 fans on the rear blowing hot air out with a very flimsy shroud does'nt seem to do the job. The whole unit gets quite hot even outside the shroud. It could really do with a fan to suck in cold air, but the problem is placement.
The front is solid and the slots for memory cards and power button. The bottom or one of the sides cant be used if you have it vertical and MS dont know which way you'll have it. The back is already full.
Basically leaves the horizontal top as the vertical top has the HDD mounted. If they used the horizontal top:
1) having a fan mounted wouldnt look all nice.
2) Only location would be front right off centred to any main components so I'm not sure it would provide any benefit.
As I type and think of a solution. My only thought is MS would have been better converting one of the fans to suck in cold air, have this enter a shroud which pushed cold air round the system through the heatsink and used the second top fan to blow the heated air out.
As hot air rises and if they could just separate the fans by 1/2cm or more this might work. I feel confident this would remove some of the ambient heat that builds up in the system.
How did it get scratched? Did you move the console with it in?
Mine died and I got a replacement which (touch wood) is fine now
I've had mine since January or early February of last year and haven't had any major problems with mine. I've had the ocassional lockup (happened A LOT while playing Oblivion) and I've had red lights flashed at me (which went away after a reset) but no scratched discs or red ring of death. I think that 30% is way too high then the real amount as you're going to hear a lot more from the people who have had failures then from people who haven't had any at all. Too bad only Microsoft knows the exact numbers and they won't release them.
PS3 cooling system design by Asus was done professionally.
All the while, not a single Wii or PS3 has been returned.
Givin how MS' treats RMA on both consumer and retailer side, I personally would _never_ buy a 360. Never. Whenever a 360 is returned to me, i have to spend 1 hour with MS support, only to be told it is my custumers (spellcheck...) fault. What the hell kind of an answer is that?
I've been pissed at MS more than once, and if I had any saying in this matter (sadly i don't...) I would'nt sell any 360's. None at all. The costs of repairs and hours is more than we make, selling the bloody thing.
I own a PS3 and don't feel it is too expensive in any way.
I _would_ own a 360, givin my position, if i felt it would have been even the slightest more reliable.
Sorry for my bad english... Not being english does that to you...
Yeah, it ain't weird they die so quickly. A lot of there problems would be gone if they'd used normal solder instead of the lead-less crap. Plus i also think they should've invested a bit more and added a slim dvd drive. They might do that later on. The big problem to me is the gpu heatsink, it's just so goddamn tiny.
Ms should give every 360 owner 250 bucks credit to buy wc stuff at newegg :D
And off-topic a I am also on PS3 #2. The thing had a 50/50 chance of turning on (it would turn on and then beep at me 3 times before going back into standby). Although I do have to give it cudo's, when I did get it turned on, I left it on for an entire week (I kid you not) and the thing didn't crash once, didn't over heat, and when I felt the back it wasn't hot at all.
Only one of my friends Xbox 360s are still working, two of them got the red halo. And PS3s... only one friend has that, and his fails to start 1/2 of the time. I'm glad that I got a Wii. :P
why cant they bolt it down, like just about every other high heat cooler does ?
It actually has 'clamps'. They add glue to the cpu and gpu to stop them from cracking the solder underneath. The problem seems to be the gpu/cpu getting to hot, melting the solder underneath. That causes them to have loose connections. Most people screw the heatsinks on with m5 nuts&bolts. that way, the gpu/cpu can't come loose.
Secondly, just like any company that makes a product, they will continue to do the least possible in being able to ensure the 360 works at the time of purchase and through the 1-year warranty, but after that warranty is up...better buy some aftermarket cooling kit....and I mean soon! It's probably the same with the PS3, but at the same time, from what I've heard (and haven't heard): not too many PS3's have been returned due to overheating issues so that shows a lot for Sony and how they manufactured their console.
the X360 gpu/cpu gets so hot it melts the solder? that is insane!!!!
[hint]microsoft talk to <insert good cpu/gpu cooler company here> to make an easy replacement for your crappy cooler[/hint]
forgot to add, MS are in fact selling the console at a profit as are Nintendo, the only one that are not profiting is Sony.
- PS3 had problems befóre the launch, but fixed nearly all of them. Although the price is higer then the other consoles, most of them actually seem to work quite well. Imho, it's more worth to buy a PS3 then a 360, even if it's just for the Bluray and small amount of actuall hardwareproblems at the moment.
- 360 didn't have a whole lot of problems before launch, but a lot of bugs and malfunctions were discovered after launch. Scratching DVD's, "extremely" loud, running too hot, hackilicious, circle of death are just some of the problems that haunt this console right now. Price is medium/expensive, and in my opinion certainly not worth it if ±30% fails to run like it should.
- Wii's are actually the only ones who hardly had any problems at all. On rare ocassionit a few of them might have a little problem, but all in all, this is by far the most solid console at the moment.
From what I can see, the consoleworld is in a pretty bad shape compared to most of the previous console-releases. Things are either malfunctioning or too expensive, except the Wii (which I happen to have, hehe). I really enjoy my Wii, but I can't believe that the other 2 are so busy breaking eachother's neck that they can't seem to make a solid console :(
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/05/04/Xbox_will_make_profit_next_year/1
Bear in mind though that I don't think Sony is profiting on the PS2 just yet though either. Console companies make consoles to make money from games, not consoles. It's like selling cars in order to profit from petrol sales.
Brett touched on this in his last column;
http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2007/06/20/of_spiders_and_flies/1
and most of the time they sell consoles at a loss to get them into peoples houses, it may look like a better deal compared to a PC, but thats because each one can be subsidised by like £100
But then they should (theoretically) make their money back with sales of games (which are usually £10-20 more expensive then the PC counterpart)
Though with a 30% failure rate, it seems hard to believe that the 360 is going to become profitable so soon
I do hope you realize that a Wii is just a Gamecube that has been repackaged with a new controller.
I do hope you realise that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 will never be as good or multi-functional as a decent PC :P
You're missing the point completely. The PS3 and 360 are completely new units, where as the Gamecube/Wii is not. When making new hardware problems are bound to occur. Not to mention how much more complex the 360 and PS3 are in comparison. BTW just let me know where you can get a PC that plays games like Gears of War and the Darkness and will only set you back 400 dollars.
Ebay. Plus, you can recoup the money you spend in savings from not paying 100 quid for two games and being able to use the PC for a whole load of other things which you can earn money through, like selling things on Ebay.
Kind of circular, innit.
Dunno where you shop Joe... Most brand new 360 games are sold at £39.99, but if you shop around you can get them for £35 new. I paid £18 for a new copy of GoW
Anyway, the point is that all console games are over expensive. People just seem to be used to it now, which is sad.
I prefer ease of use over cost when I normally wait a couple of weeks and buy the games secondhand or for <£30, PC gaming is preventing that with distribution like Steam and things like Starforce just piss me off.
Personally, I prefer customability and decent interface over everything else and I find that games designed for PC offer more content and more mature themes and storylines, as well as offering a better experience and more mods etc. You don't get mods for console games, and when you do you have to buy them via XBL.
Don't get me wrong, I love consoles, but I'll choose a PC if I need a single system. Each to their own though.
I like the "Pop it in the drive and play" don't install to hard drive, apart from saving, don't fiddle with AA this and AS that, just jump in and play.
Yes the PC has some advantages, but I strongly believe that the PS3 with a keyboard and mouse has taken that crown away now.
LOL! You can't find a rig that will play either of those games at 1920 x 1080i or 720p for 400 dollars. In the US PC games are almost the same ammount of money as new releases 50 vs 60, although quite a few games for the consoles are selling at the 50 dollar price point the first week now.
spend a bit more and you start to pwn the console, also don't forget that MS/Sony/ninty partially subsidise their consoles, so they are actually about another £100 or so
Secondly, games on consoles are £40-50
Games on PC's are £30 when new, usually dropping to £20 and you can for eg pick up doom3 now for £10
also i think only the PS3 is natively doing 1080i, i believe the 360 is up scaling (correct me if I'm wrong though), oh and don't forget how hideously expensive a 1080i screen is, not that a 20" pc screen is much better (but has a better resolution)
Also you cant even customise the interface on the console, and they are forever updating them to break anything custom, because you obviously shouldn't be allowed to do what you want with your own console
i would also take a PC any day over a console, the games are a lot better and £10-20 cheaper on average, plus it does loads more, and there are plenty of free games, and you can do what you want with it, plus keyboard & mouse > controller for all games (except racing but then you need a steering wheel which you can get for pc, and you can even use a controller on your pc if you really want)
As for the customization of consoles, both the PS3 and the 360 allow for you to change your background pictures, certaint text and also colors which is pretty much the same thing you can do on the PC, but why does it matter? You aren't USING a desktop, you should be playing games for crying outloud.
I agree with you on the buying a PC over a console. You WILL get the most out of your PC as of day one on the games you pay full price for and the games will drop in price a whole lot faster than console versions due to there not being as much licensing fees and all that bullcrap you have with consoles because we all know that both Sony and Microsoft have to make profit through software and peripherals, so that's why the prices drop quicker on the PC side, but now with this "Games for Windows" push coming out, PC games may stay expensive for a little while longer.
Anyways, that's my 2 cents.
I didn't know they made tri core 3.2 64 bit processors.... FYI the 360 has a max capability of 9.6 GHZ, with 512mb of XGDDR3. You can't get either of those for the price of the actual console.
I think PS3 is far far far away from "taking the crown" and almost definitely never will.
For starters PC games have user-created mods and such.
You only have to muck about with all the settings if you want to get the very best graphics/display out of the game, otherwise usually its just a quick install (Depending on your system and which game) then play!
I do prefer gaming on a console, but as far as FPS games go, PC will ALWAYS be king.