In our intial installment (HolyFragger.com Xbox 360 3 Red Lights of Death (3RLOD) Test) we whent through some of the things we wanted to do with this series. Since the initial writing, we have received the first of two broken Xbox 360s we purchased from eBay.
This particular Xbox 360 had already been opened up, so the warranty was voided prior to us receiving it. One has to assume that's why we were able to get such a great price on it.
We plugged it in, and hooked it up to the TV, and sure enough, 3 angry red lights began blinking at us. We also were unable to get any picture or sound out of the system.
We turned it off, and decided to run our first test: The infamous "Towel Method".
The "Towel Method" consists of wrapping your console in a couple of towels, or in our case, a blanket, and letting it run for a while. The towels help to restrict the airflow, thus heating up the unit, and theoretically re-flowing the broken solders on the board, which is an apparently common cause of the 3 red lights.
Note that we actually attempted this test with our previous Xbox 360, which is now in Microsoft's hands being fixed, and had some success with it, so we were naturally excited to see if this would work with the new unit.
Needless to say, after letting it heat up for 45 minutes, and cool down for approx 20 minutes, there was no change in the state of our console.
As a side note, regarding the "Towel Method", we've found in our research that the fix is, at best, temporary, and at worst, the first step down the road towards oblivion for your console. Some of the more recent posts we've read have actually recommended AGAINST using this method, as it ends up exaserbating the problem.
With the "Towel Method" out of the way, we wasted no time cracking open the case to look at her internal organs. Upon opening her up, we found that the previous owner had already tried to perform one of the repairs we were going to be attempting.
The next test was going to be replacing the "X" clamps used on the console to hold the heatsinks down onto the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and the CPU (Central Processing Unit). Apparently another common problem with the Xbox 360 is that over time the heat generated by the system warps the board, and causes the heatsinks to break contact with the CPU and/or the GPU.
The repair consists of the following steps:
- Removing the "X" clamps
- Cleaning the heatsinks, CPU, and GPU of the old thermal paste
- Putting new thermal past down (Arctic Silver seems to be the popular one to use)
- Placing the heatsinks back into their appropriate places using new screws and several washers in place of the "X" clamps
- Heating the unit up for a couple of minutes (to get the board to straighten out)
- Then tighten the new screws down firmly
As we pulled off the heatsinks, we noticed that the previous owner apparently used a little too much thermal paste when attempting their repair. We actually found drops of it in various parts of the motherboard.
Ignoring this, we cleaned everything the best we could, added our Arctic Silver thermal paste, put the screws and washers in (hand tight), and plugged the unit in to heat up. We let it heat up for 2 minutes without any fans, etc, to cool it down. We then proceeded to tighten our screws down, and put it all back together while the board cooled down.
Completed, we crossed our fingers, plugged the system in, and fired her up.
No luck. We played with it a little more (heating it up again, tightening the screws down more, etc), but have ultimately given up on this unit.
At this point, we're unsure if it's due to the fact that the thermal paste from the previous owner was covering a bunch of the board, and that caused other problems (we couldn't clean it all off), if the previous owner had damaged something else with the system, or if the unit already had both feet in the grave.
Luckily we just received the other unit we purchased off of eBay. The new unit still has the Microsoft Warranty Seal intact, so we know the case hasn't been opened, or the system tampered with.
Our first stop will be to see if Microsoft will fix it. It still falls under the 3 year warranty for the 3 red lights, but if the previous owner registered it, the warranty won't carry over, in which case, this one will be fair game to opening up and tinkering with.
Update: 1/29