|
|
Thermal analysts examine Xbox 360
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 6th August 2007
The major causes for overheating problems in the Xbox 360 were the inadequate heatsink and tiny fans.
Good, no need to bring you up to speed yet then!
The big news now though is to do with why heating is such an issue for the 360 that it warranted so much attention in the first place. A Japanese news source, Nikkei, has had a thermal design expert take a look at two separate versions of the Xbox 360, one bought in 2005 and the other which has been subject to a repair in May 2007, to try and find out exactly what's wrong in the beige box.
The first thing the design experts noticed is that the temperature gap for the console compared to the ambient was +22°C. According to the experts, an average temperature gap is around +10°C, so a difference of +22°C is quite notable.
The expert also noted that the cooling fan was only half the size of most desktop PCs and speculated that this was because Microsoft wanted to reduce the noise made by the system. The heatsink was also very small, to the extent that the expert commented; "The heatsink on the graphics LSI is so small, I wonder if it can really cool down the board." Apparently the the heatsink has been shrunk down to allow room above it for the DVD drive.
The analyst also discovered that the newest console he examined, which had been repaired in May 2007, did not have a new heatsink installed in to it at all.
If you've got a head for numbers and a finger which like to tinker then you may want to head on over to the full report and check out the step-by-step process which the experts went through. Then you'll be fully prepared to talk about it in the forums.
Related articles on bit-tech.net
Comments (25)
Stats: 0.077 seconds
The fan is small because they want to make the console small, if the console is only 60mm high, there is only room for a 60mm fan
Larger fans shift more air at the same DB levels (and therefore, shift the same amount of air at lower DB levels)
Also, if the gfx heatsink is such a problem, why the hell didn't MS use a slimline DVD drive, which would at least 1/2 the space required for it ....
That shows what happens when you make simple mods to the 360.
Yea.. thanks i'll remember that... feel sry for those in the Antarctic research station who wana play xbox after doing the whole polar bar club deal.
but imagine an Xbox 360 as a life saving device, a person who felt into icy water on Antarctica , then he is wrapped in some blanket with xbox360' running, that way you can save 2 "lives" 1 is the one console suffering from Ring of death and the other is the person
Also, the 100 C thing isn't necessarily bad as long as it's built to withstand that temperature. I'm not sure if it is, I'm just saying it's okay as long as its within specs.
Only with the poorly ventilated demo kiosks. I run Folding@Home on my PS3 24/7 (well, when I'm not playing) and I have yet to have a problem.
i wish MS would improve the cooling. its easily done.
Just some thoughts...
Well 90% of small fans need to spin faster then the large (lets say 92mm and 120mm) ones, if you look at the very VERY poor quality of components used in the xbox360 you will know that even does the ATI Xenos vga chip is designed to withstand the lets say "90-100C" then the solder points of the chip and the low layered PCB of the motherboard does not have to ;] , so you have it, low quality and excessive heat can lead to small failures that lead to global console crash (such as the dreaded Ring of Death )
As far i read the PS3 had some minor issues with the Blue Ray drive , SONY states that failure rate is as high as 1% , people sometimes report random squared dots in games (probably bad shader unit in graphics chip) , also there might be some Hard Drive failures but they are presumed to be low since PS3 uses the Seagate Momentus portable drives (witch are reliable so far)
if M$ say yes it was an fault with the Xbox thay will probably get sued allot (if not many USA peeps have already tyred to)
dono why thay have not resoved this problem by makeing an new Xbox 360 that does not have these problems, Xbox 360 is the most unrelible console ever made and i not buy one untill its resoved with an revsion Bigger heat sink mite lower the temps an little bit
but that Revew of an Xbox was an little lame due to the fact he did not bother to test the New Xbox 360 heat sink as well
Which would seem to make more sense coming from an expert.
It appears that this is only being done after June, so it would be interesting to see a re-evaluation of the article with the new HS, which is now being installed.