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80 Comments
- fissionignition, on 10/10/2007, -12/+55"ZOMG, its teh upgraydz... M$ sucks, they want my monies..."
etc... - mrfreeziexp, on 10/10/2007, -2/+43That reminds me of one of the funniest digg comments I have ever read.. "M$ sucks, I just bought a 360 and now it's outdated! I'm going to switch to PC gaming."
- MasterThief117, on 10/10/2007, -5/+35Can they shrink the power brick while they're at it?
- gwolf, on 10/10/2007, -1/+26Cheaper is good, I like cheaper.
- mrfreeziexp, on 10/10/2007, -1/+24Where have you been for 10 years?
- wageslaven, on 10/10/2007, -10/+30The machines have already seen a major-overhall to improve reliability and resistance to heat. Remember this from the 3 Year Warranty Annoucnment:
"We have been following this issue closely, and with on-going testing have identified several factors that cancause a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights on the console. To address this issue, and as part of our ongoing work, we have already made certain improvements to the console."
See that "we have already made certain improvements to the console" part?
These improvments are contained on all HDMI Xbox 360s (which are MainBoard Version 1.1):
http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/news/inside_the_xbox_360_elite.htm
What is the problem with these forums repeating the same tired trope over and over. Did they miss the massive motherboard changes, reduced component size / count and new GPU / CPU mounting methodology? All this was the product of MS analysis of the failure methods... and we've *already* seen the press on the matter. We've *already* seen a new motherboard for the purpose of fixing the problems. - SaxxonPike, on 10/10/2007, -4/+24There are a lot of people having the red ring of death problem. Why don't they remove the red lights? Problem solved. (at least they won't see the red now.)
- chris9902, on 10/10/2007, -5/+23You must be new to the Internet. Let me explain. People don't care about facts. They know it all and anything you say that is different to what they think is wrong and you're a *****.
- bigbadgoat, on 10/10/2007, -2/+13I guess that would be a great way out of the 3 year warranty. Replace all red lights with blue ones.
"Ohh erm.. sorry you see, the 3 year warranty covered the RED ring of death. You have a BLUE ring of death, theres no extended warranty on that." - Rooster99, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Its not like its hard to hide, and you aren't exactly carrying the thing everywhere you go. Would you rather they made it part of the actual console? The thing would be massive and it would weigh a heap!
- ahhell, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11Rot in hell spammer.
- modifiedbears, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10You can't shrink it or else the ghosts would get out.
- pegisys, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10it's 512MB of ram and 10MB of eDRAM for the gpu
this is about the 10MB of eDRAM, and they need to move as much heat sa possible away from the GPU - Bfettmaul, on 10/10/2007, -6/+14You know, the power brick size, isn't all that bad.
- schizogony, on 10/10/2007, -11/+16I just bought a 360 two months ago. All these recent price drops and hardware upgrade announcements are REALLY pissing me off.
- bigjosh359, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Go buy a second 360.
- johnhummel, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6Well, at least it looks like they're in the right direction. I'm still waiting until next year-ish when the 65 nm chips come out, just because I don't want to run the risk of buying a current one and being one of my buddies with a machine to ship in for repair later.
I'm patient, even though Bioshock *does* look purty. - bigjosh359, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6Yeah, if you add the brick to the 360, it is the same size as a PS3 and still weighs less. Enough with the bricks already. Just play your games and enjoy it!
- Frozo, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Never had a single problem with my launch day 360, as did lots of people.
- rilarios, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5and i think that the 30% number came from your research of the Internets..... stop believing in that. If the failure rate were 30% Microsoft would have recalled the product.
- wageslaven, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3One
- modifiedbears, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4You're as dumb as this story. The improvement discussed in this article changes nothing for the user.
- 0Degrees, on 10/10/2007, -1/+365nm processors will use less power because of the smaller size, get it? In result, there will be less heat created (less power = less heat). There's no indication that speed would increase other than maybe slightly due to lower operating temperature. Does that answer your question?
- jostheller, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2"Saying that making the system cooler will make it more reliable is to miss the entire point."
I typically like agreeing with you, but I you are making giant claims here that are either not true or not public knowledge. In regards to the quote above- If you assume that the original circuit was designed with proper trace termination, good ground planes, and clean power rails... Then it is entirely possible/reasonable that the RROD are due to the 360 overheating and thus missing setup and hold timing on the different digital IC's. When I design IC's, I run my timing analysis at 85 degree's C and if my IC heats up to over 85 degrees C then I can no longer guarantee signal integrity. The same is true for all electronics. What you are claiming is that the 360 RROD problems are not due to heat, but due to an improper design such as bad termination, power/ground issues, or something else. Back up your claims... What is the problem with the 360?
Also... your claim that "other devices (like PS3).. run hotter, are are more reliable" is not valid. Every IC has different temperature tolerances... Additionally different types of heat sinks provide different amounts of cooling. To compare to completely different devices (like the 360 and PS3) on a thermal level does not make sense because they are completely different systems, with different IC's (which means different temperature limits), different case air flows, and different cooling techniques.
What can be said, is that Sony knows how to properly design hardware and they obviously take careful analysis of thermal characteristics. It appears to me that Microsoft did not accurately model their 360 thermally... and now they are trying to make up for their inaccurate thermal models. This doesn't mean the 360 board/IC designs are flawed. Thermal issues like the 360 has, can be resolved... - Jeffler, on 10/10/2007, -7/+9Oh, please. Any bigger and it could be named an independent country.
- Hobofuzz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Wow, you sure are nice.
Anyway, the PS3 generates far more heat than the 360, and has far less space inside to deal with it. While the PS3 is big as hell, much of its insides are occupied by the BD drive, with a tiny space on the left for the actual computing components (similar to the PS2). Air is blown out of the right side and back of the PS3, and that air is quite hot, yet the PS3 doesn't overheat very often, if even at all when at normal room temperature. The PS3 has only one fan in it, with its air being routed to the vents with a very large heatsink, and it manages heat better than the 360 does with 2 fans, an external power supply, a massive heatsink, and heat pipes.
Not to say that the 360 is a piece of garbage or anything, but Sony clearly has the better engineers here. It's almost as if the two companies swapped engineers for this generation. The original Xbox was built like a tank, while the PS2 could break if you shook it too hard. Now, the 360 is the fragile piece of machinery, and the PS3 is the tank. - starvo, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3The Republic of PowerBrickLandia?
- nzknzknzk, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Same here, mine has been chugging along fine after 200 hours of Oblivion and god knows how many of PGR3, GoW, and Splinter Cell.
- wageslaven, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4The machines have already seen a major-overhall to improve reliability and resistance to heat. Remember this from the 3 Year Warranty Annoucnment:
"We have been following this issue closely, and with on-going testing have identified several factors that cancause a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights on the console. To address this issue, and as part of our ongoing work, we have already made certain improvements to the console."
See that "we have already made certain improvements to the console" part?
These improvments are contained on all HDMI Xbox 360s (which are MainBoard Version 1.1):
http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/news/inside_the_xbox_360_elite.htm
What is the problem with these forums repeating the same tired trope over and over. Did they miss the massive motherboard changes, reduced component size / count and new GPU / CPU mounting methodology? All this was the product of MS analysis of the failure methods... and we've *already* seen the press on the matter. We've *already* seen a new motherboard for the purpose of fixing the problems. - jostheller, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2You can Not compare the thermal characteristics of two completely different electronic devices. The PS3 either 1. using higher temperature rated IC's, 2. has heat sinks that are used more efficiently, 3. Has a better designed airflow. You can say that the 360 has thermal issues, and that is supported by Microsoft changing the heat sinks used. But it is ridiculous to try and compare the thermal characteristics of the two systems considering they use completely different IC's, board, and case. silly...
- gwolf, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2But doesn't MS want their system to be cheaper than their competition. They want to sell a lot of them and make a lot of money. If they could, they would make it $100 each, they don't really care so long as they turn a reasonable profit.
- superdupergc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1actually if the power brick is built like i think it is, it's got a big transformer in there. it's probably a big iron and copper (or whatever composite metals they use) sequence of loops which, according to physics, HAVE to be that size to step up the voltage/current and not melt. power supplies in computers have about the same volume as the power brick, they're just shaped differently.
- chingy1788, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4also replace that aluminium heatsink with a copper one
- rocke86, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Me too bought one 2 days ago. I was tired of waiting. This news of a new cooler 360 comes up all the time. I decided just to wait till a price drop so I could finally enjoy games. Worst case, I join the repair club and have to send it in for repair for a week or so, I guess I can talk to the family during this time.
- Meep3D, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Heat tends to dictate the upper limit of chip speeds, and with CPU's as soon as they do a die shrink a lot of the time they just up the mhz to take advantage of the reduction in temp (I deliberately downclock hardware on occasion if reliability is a concern (and performance is not)).
I think they are doing a die shrink of the memory without upping the clock speed, possibly because they would need to upgrade the fsb to handle the increase in speed (which they didn't). So less heat. - jsleeman, on 10/10/2007, -4/+5I don't know about some of you, but I have been waiting for them to fix the red ring of death. I almost picked one up when they extended the warranty but for now I will wait to see if the fail rate drops below the 30% it is now. In the mean time I will continue to enjoy my Wii
- gwolf, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1That might do some good except copper is very expensive right now.
The updated version has a copper tube heat pipe leading away from the GPU to the second radiator. That might work even better than an all copper heat sink. - 0Degrees, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Understand that a computer crammed into such small dimensions is extremely hard to design "correctly" (whatever that means). I've had two console brick, my second console I removed the X-Clamps from both GPU's and remounted the heatsinks with washers and bolts. While the console no longer red rings and is much more reliable, it still does freeze. It seems to me that reducing the heat with MUCH better airflow, MUCH more heat pipes, and a new heatsink mounting method will be the only way to prevent these things from eventually melting down.
I get tired of hearing the people who say, "I've had my console since launch and therefore blaaah." Mark my words, your console WILL eventually fail due to intense heat over time - you will not still be playing your XBOX 360 15 years in the future like with the original NES. - wageslaven, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Can you provide some technical commentary on the changes you see here:
http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/news/inside_the_xbox_360_elite.htm - jsleeman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1to prove I didnt pull that out my butt
http://digg.com/xbox_360/Retailers_Reveal_Xbox_360_Failure_Rate_Over_30 - johnhummel, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1But I don't care about HDMI - and while the new heatsink is a nice start, I'll still wait and make sure. A few more months won't kill me.
- modestmouse, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Does anyone know if the failure rate of the Elite is lower than the Premium? And does that Premium fail less frequently after these changes?
- tatical, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Isn't that what Hobofuzz was saying, the PS3 is better designed. And I do agree: "Sony clearly has the better engineers here".
- kentifer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Then what? Complain when m$ upgrades their next console?
- slstudios, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0This is hilarious yet so true.
- slstudios, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Here's probably the most comprehensive analysis on the hardware breakdowns: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/617/617951p1.html
- slstudios, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I have yet to see the error on my console or any of my friends. And we've been work'n these 360s like a Bangkok wh0re on 2-for-1 night. *knocks on wood*
- slstudios, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I think someone has brick-envy.
- slstudios, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0sssssshhh..... $ony does the exact same thing. Only they care more for propagating their BR media format then they do about their gamers. They used their PS2 base to deliver a Trojan Horse so they could get a leg up in the format wars. But if you know anything about Sony's tactics (and I do as an ex-$ony employee), it's nothing new. Have we already forgotten the 2005 $ony BMG Rootkit Fiasco? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG
- slstudios, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I don't recall the exact numbers, but failure rates on Elites, so far, are extremely low. I read however that a system needs at least a year or two to get real accurate data from the field based on realistic usage. Accelerated lab testing is only a broad approximation at best for electronics. It's still too early to say if these numbers will still remain low.
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