How I fix RRoD 360s (video)

Ok on my second project this one has a little bit more of a challenge because I did the fix for this previously but the board was not seated properly(One nylon on the top and a nylon and metal on the bottom w/ round head screws)and it was also giving me a 2 red light error so later on it started to freeze during gameplay. I did the heat gun on it and it seemed to be running fine for a good while at least 30min+ or so of gaming. My next plan of action is to go ahead and drill the chassis cause right now it just sitting on my xbox 1. Any other suggestions please give them I appreciate all the advice on this thread everything started to make a lot more sense then my first try at this.

 

Ok, i'm still working on it. Now I have one red ring, lower right, tv say E73. I've read that is a faulty ethernet port. I backed the screws off the heatsinks, turned the 360 on again and got the familiar 3 rings, then bam, went to one red ring. I'm just about ready to kill this. Any suggestions.

 

The best I can tell you for drilling the chassis is to make sure you use a 5mm bit and to remove all burs around the hole. I've seen some horrible looking chassis' where it looked like they tried to use wolverine to make the holes or something.

have you done the heatgun yet or are you still overheating it?

 

Haven't done the heat gun thing yet, (don't have one). I am overheating it, but the problem is, when i turn it on, I only get one red lite. Earlier I got 3 red lites, and let it run for an hour. I let it cool for 20 min, and turned it on, and that damn one red lite cam back on. I have re-seated the sinks numerous times. I am wondering if it is a hardware issue.

 

You're right it is a hardware issue and that's what the heatgun fixes. Overheating does not and you're making it harder to fix. Heatguns are only $20, certainly much cheaper than buying a new xbox 360 which will be your only recourse if you keep overheating it. Do the heatgun fix and x-clamp fix exactly as I've described them in these past few pages and it should work (if it hasnt been damaged too much already)

 

Reporting succesful repair by the heatgun, it seems that this method really works w00ly... but for how long, that´s a question...

... w00ly you say, that your xbox works for a year now after the heatgun fix? I just want to be sure this fix is the most permanent fix that can man do...

and the last thing... w00ly, I was talking to you about the xbox I fixed with the towel trick... today I´ve talked to the guy with this xbox and he told me, that he´s got three red lights already again... You told me it´s harder to fix it after the towel trick (but how) ... so what should I do... should I perform the heatgun fix as well as with the second xbox which is running right now?

And about the x-clamp fix, I´m using 10 mm M5 screws with 2 1.6 mm nylon washers (one at the top of the board, one at the bottom)... do I still need to drill holes to the chassis or is this good enough?

Thanks a lot for answer m8... I have to tell you, I didn´t really trust the heatgun trick (I though I´m gonna fry the GPU, CPU and RAMs), but as far as my experiences are, this is the best "heatfix" that man ever invented .
edit: The heads of the screws are 2mm thick

 

Yes, if you dont have flexing of your motherboard after you've done your reflow/proper x-clamp then it should last longer than a year (assuming other conditions are ideal like the system is horizontal and it's not on carpet or confined in a cabinet). I dont know about it being the *most* permanent...that'd probably be like a reball and transplanting the motherboard into a new case that can have it sit perfectly even and get more efficient cooling, but it's certainly the much more cost effective than that.

As far as the guy with the towel tricked system, I've seen all sorts of issues with these. The ones that have become impossible to fix are easy to tell because they've been done so many times that the thermal paste will literally be baked onto the chips and almost impossible to remove. These ones usually have errors relating to a short circuit (such as 0001 or 0020). It's still entirely possible that the system can be fixed though using the normal heatgun process, perhaps adding some liquid flux to aid the reflow and/or adding a low temp oven bake to remove any warping.

For your x-clamp fix, it's absolutely crucial that you get the motherboard to sit even with the other standoffs. So you can just put the 1 washer on your screw then set the screw next to the standoff and see if the top of the washer sits even with the top of the standoff. If not then either find some flat tapered-head screws or enlarge your old x-clamp screw holes to 5mm and get some 16mm long screws and use 3 washers. All the heatgunning is for nothing if you still have flexing caused by a poor x-clamp fix because that's what caused the problem in the first place.

 

Okay, I get everything, so the heatgun trick is ok, now I have to make sure I´m doing x-clamp fix properly... Maybe I should remove the washer which is on the bottom side of the motherboard... as you are saying, the thinner I make the bottom part the better... Right now the x-clamp fix makes 3.6 mm "space" on the bottom of the board... But I don´t know if that is enough to have the x-clamp fix ok or still not... I´m not native english or american, so I don´t understand what the word standoff means . One way or another, the way I fix the box right now makes 3.6 mm under the motherboard of the box. If I´m gonna remove the washer that sits between the screwhead and the motherboard, then it´s 2 mms at the bottom. That could do it... but isn´t it necessary to have the washer there? Maybe the screws will not fit into the passive cooler... Huh that´s really hard question... Making holes into the iron desk would perhaps fix everything, but I´m not properly equipped to do this...

 

You definitely need to have 1 washer on there because not enough washers causes flexing downwards. The standoffs are the little ridges around the chassis where the motherboard screws go through...it has the motherboard "stand off" of the chassis.

If you *really* dont want to get a drill and 5mm drill bit then i suppose the extra .6mm isnt that bad for flexing and *may* work but I wouldnt recommend it because the RRoD will probably come back and you'll end up needing to heatgun again (and heatgunning over and over isnt recommended either). Your cheapest option if you dont have a drill is to find the .80 x 10mm m5 flat tapered head screws.

 

I can seek 0.8mm washers, maybe it would be ok to put it on the bottom of the board instead of the 1.6... do you think that could do it?

 

I would prefer the .8 ones but see which combination is the closest to the height of the standoffs

 

Okay, but how can I see which combination is the closest to the height of the standoffs? How can I measure the ridges? Well simply... how to figure it out?

One more question... with the towelled xbox... I found out that this xbox´s CPU´s passive cooler is getting very very hot... Do u know why?

 

Here are some with progress of my xbox cooling system... hope you cuold be inspired by this
Why did I do this? I was playing fallout 3 one day and suddenly the screen went black and RROD appeared. I let my box for 10 minutes and then started it again and it worked... But I´ve told myself, I have to take care of the temperature levels, so I made myself the xbox cooling system... since then (about 15 months ago) RROD never appeared again on that machine.

1) Here´s the first version of the cooling... one plastic side of the xbox has been removed...




2) Here´s the detail how the coolers are connected together...



3) Here´s the extension of the power cables to DVD-ROM



4)Here you can see it running...




5) Here´s the final cooling with DVD-ROM outside and without modding the side of the Xbox




6) Aaaand here goes the final two pictures of the final modded version that I use nowadays. (I have removed those two fans as seen in the first 4 pictures, put the zalman directly on the passive cooler of GPU and the CPU is cooling the black cooler that`s mounted onto the side of the box, under the DVD-Rom there`s just a pipe that goes out of the box right over the fan on the GPU cooler)

 

just sit the screw with the washer on it next to the standoffs. The standoffs are easy to identify, they what the motherboard screws go through. There's 2 at the power connector, 2 near the video connector, 2 at the harddrive and 3 near where the memory cards plug in. There's also 2 standoffs in the center that the long case screws pass through.

As far as the towelled system, it's possible like I mentioned that the thermal paste has had basically all the moisture evaporated out of it so it's hard and isnt properly conducting heat...so the CPU just gets hotter and hotter. So be sure to use fresh thermal paste

 

Did the drilling actually my cousin did the drilling and he made sure the holes were smooth used a 3/16 drill bit. I've been playing it now 2hrs plus and no freezing or overheating has occurred the only thing left to do now is put the case back on.!!!!

 

X-Clamp Fix

Hello guys, so I have made few measurements and maths today (did it 5 times to be sure, so I hope it`s accurate)... there should be 4.08 mms between the case and the motherboard, so the bottom part with the screw should not extend this size...

My 10 mm M5 screw has got 3.35 mm wide head (I guess its the classic M5 standard screw).
My washer is 1.6 mm wide, so I have to use 0.8 mm wide at the bottom of the board instead.
I recommend using 1.6 mm wide washer at the top of the board (between the board and the passive cooler) because the other components on the board are 1.4 mm high (so theres 0.2 mm reserve)

So the final solution for me is classic screw with 0.8 washer... that makes 3.35 + 0.8 = 4.15 mm, thats 0.07 mm higher then it should...

... I guess that wouldnt be a big deal, finding different 10mm screws with flat head or something like this is pretty hard for me, I was in 3 shops and there they hadnt any.

 

I thought I was out of the clear but it still has freezing issues. After the drilling I had no problem it was running just fine. I ran it some more the next day still no problem. I put on the case the same day still no problem getting at least 2hrs + of gaming. Today I checked to make sure everything is still running smoothly and not even 30 minutes into the game it freezes. Now I have to admit that I did not add 3 washers underneath the board because I only had enough to do 2 of each. It seemed to be enough but I can't tell it seems like I have to dot all the i's and cross the t's so to speak this so aggravating why must this thing be so stubborn.

 

Hey w00ly, so I tried to fix the towelled xbox by the heatgun... for 3 times... its still giving me the 0102 error...
The box is already dead, ain´t it?

 

Yes they can be very temperamental. That's why you need to find the other 8 washers because when you tighten the x-clamp fix down and add heat the board is warping causing the freezing.

I dunno I've never seen a 0102 that couldn't be fixed but maybe I havent ran into a 0102 that hadnt been towelled a bunch. The low temp oven bake is very effective for removing any warping or moisture in the board, might as well give that a shot. Here's a good tutorial for that: http://xbox-experts.com/tutorial/oven-bake/ I prefer the "bare board" on a cookie sheet with a layer of foil. 170F for 4 hours, turn oven off for 15 mins, open door for 5 minutes, heatgun on high 4 minutes on top only.

 

Well, I just did the heat gun, did it while your video was on, step for step, second for second. Re seated the heatsinks, and still have one red light lower right corner...sigh