Hi Guys,
A few days ago I purchased a broken Xbox 360 with the Red Ring Of Death, 3 Red lights to be exact. This means that it is overheating. So I decided to try and make some money by purchasing a broken Xbox 360 and following the video I have enclosed below to see if I could solve the problem. I have no real experience in electronics or taking things apart as I always end up with havnig one screw left over when I have put everything back together which I find weird, however I decided to give it a go.
Here is the video I used to follow the instructions which unfortunately for me did not work because I think the paste was just not up to scratch for this type of job:
Before Air Vents were cleaned:
After some light hoovering (few seconds):
I had looked into the many ways people have tried fixing the RROD overheating problem before purchasing anything and the most viable I thought would be to replace the processor paste which had worn away between the Xbox 360's processors and their heat sinks. The methods people mentioned using towels and blowing a fan into the fan vents etc I thought might work in the short term for a few hours but it would eventually go back to the 3 red lights problem.
So I purchased the X clamp kit that conprises of a syringe containing white thermal paste and 8 screws with 8 metal washers and 8 neoprene washers. My task according to the video was to remove the Xbox 360 case, take out the motherboard, remove the X clamps, clean the old thermal paste off that was previously there (some leftover residue), and reapply the new thermal paste. Then I would plug it in and switch her on, and hopefully see the 4 green lights swirling around as it booted up.
I spent about an hour and a half on this, done everything in the video, put the Xbox 360 back together, plugged in the power and......BOOM! still 3 red lights :(. I am not sure if there is perhaps something wrong with the Xbox 360 other than the heating problem however the CD tray still works, the fans are working and so does everything else.
I finally came to the conclusion that maybe the thermal paste didn't work and I did buy it and the screws for around £1.99 with free delivery on Ebay. I should have known that such a cheap fix may not have been the answer, however I am going to take the motherboard out again one more time to check I have tightened the screws just enough so the heat sinks and the processors are actually touching as I had to play with them a little bit the screws for the heat sinks to sit level again on top of the processor when reinserting them.
As far as I can see for me, the thermal paste did not work, it may be because of the quality of it, lots of people say to use Arctic Silver paste is the best but I thought I would at least give the Chinese compound a go, ya never know yer luck eh? :) Turns out I haven't much luck LOL. I will tinker about with it for a while see if I can get it workin but if worst comes to worst I can keep the broken Xbox DVD drive for spares along with its spare outer case, connectors etc so it wasn't all in vain. One thing I will show you is how much dust a 4 year old Xbox 360 accumulates over the years I had hoovered it all up before installing the new thermal paste but made no difference.
I might take my working Xbox 360 apart to make sure that the air flow is steady and gets to all parts of the heatsink, as where mine sites gets very dusty all the time very quickly. The heat sink of the processor was the worst covered in dust inbetween its fins but I forgot to take a picture I am afraid.
All in all I don't think would reocmmend this heat paste, it just seems a bit too wet and takes ages to dry even with a heat gun which I found weird. After a few days it dried out and I tried again but still no avail.
Thanks,
Henry
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