Extra fan instead of DVD drive.

[jfelding]

First of all im not quite sure this is the right place for this thread? But my xbox is homebrew, and so, i just placed it here. Feel free to move it

My homebrew xenon is running really nice. I would like to keep it this way . Therefore, i want to cool it as good as i can. I made the stock fans 12V, and they got the CPU down to 60 degrees and the GPU down to a bit below 50. This is this is idle in freestyle. I also gave the fan shroud some gaffa tape to make the airflow a little bit better.

I have read a few places, that its best if everything is below 50, so i would still like to get the CPU way down.. Considering im not using the DVD drive anymore, i would like to replace it with a fan. I found one lying around in my house. Dont know if its any good.

Now for the real question :
I am no expert in how the power connections works, so i would like a bit help. The fan has 2 wires connected to the PC plug. One red and one black. Im assuming this is Positive and Ground (negative?). So, i just solder the red, positive one to a 12V spot, and then what? Is that it, or should i also solder the black wire to something?

Do you have any other recommendations for making my xbox cooler?
Help is very appreciated!

 

[JammyJules]

I've done this to my xbox with a slight exception. I still use the DVD drive in the console, So I bought a big 4" fan, cut a whole in my case, and fixed it on the top.

Using a test meter, you can test the output from the existing fan socket on your motherboard. Once you have established the 12v and ground, solder your red and black wires to these.

The wiring will differ slightly from xbox to xbox ... have fun !

 

[jfelding]

I've done this to my xbox with a slight exception. I still use the DVD drive in the console, So I bought a big 4" fan, cut a whole in my case, and fixed it on the top.

Using a test meter, you can test the output from the existing fan socket on your motherboard. Once you have established the 12v and ground, solder your red and black wires to these.

The wiring will differ slightly from xbox to xbox ... have fun !

Thanks!
A test meter? Do you mean a multi-meter or something else?
And I was thinking, that i would keep the sotck (well.. modded) fan and then just put a fan on top of the CPU heatsink. Do you think it is neccesary to cut a whole and put the fan externally?

 

[rocket8080]

If you want to keep your xbox really cool then theres a tut on xbox scene for adding a 70mm fan to your xbox. I did this and it keeps my jtag well cool, I run the 70mm fan at 12v and the rear fans at 75%. On ide my temps are cpu 51.3c, Gpu 35.8 , ram 38.9. Playing gears of war 2 for 3 hours cpu 55.9c, gpu 45.2c ram 44.2c. If you want a led 70mm fan their hard to find, I used a core cooler v1 fan and wired it to underneath the power connector.

 

[BGAMods]

ebay item number - 380230416240

70mm fan with blue LED'S.

 

[rocket8080]

sweet I have been looking for another source of these fans!!
Thanks added

Meant to say that the 70mm fan mod I mentioned in my earlier post looks a lot nicer then sticking a fan ontop of the case .
That why I decided to do it!

 

[jfelding]

Nice! Thats what i want my temps to be like! I think i know what tut you are talking about, and the xbox looks quite sweet in the end i must say. The problems are:
i have no equipment nor skill to cut a perfect hole and put a fan in it.

I tried to solder a molex cable to the underside of the PSU plug, for use with a fan and a HDD and such (Multiple molex plugs, yes) and i got three red rings, which is quite scary, when working with a xenon. Removing the wires made my xbox work just fine. Have you heard/experienced anything like this before? Im thinking about putting my case back on my xbox, but i would like to finish the final mods first.

Thanks for the support!
What a great community

 

[rocket8080]

Yeah I had this problem when I put my 70mm fan in . I was in a rush doing the soldering ( not good practice ) and soldered one of my wires onto the wrong pin. This gave me the rrod and secondary error code 0001. I was using pin 4 & 8, and used pin 4 & 7 by mistake. Double check your soldering and the pins your using. As for cutting the 70mm fan hole it can be a pain. I used a 67mm holesaw in a table drill at work. The placement of the hole can be a pain aswell as the fan is a tight fit, 1mm clearance either side. I also mounted the fan guard on the inside with some rubber mounts which I think looks quite sweet. If you get stuck where to drill the hole I can give you the measurements from my casing.

 

[jfelding]

Yeah I had this problem when I put my 70mm fan in . I was in a rush doing the soldering ( not good practice ) and soldered one of my wires onto the wrong pin. This gave me the rrod and secondary error code 0001. I was using pin 4 & 8, and used pin 4 & 7 by mistake. Double check your soldering and the pins your using. As for cutting the 70mm fan hole it can be a pain. I used a 67mm holesaw in a table drill at work. The placement of the hole can be a pain aswell as the fan is a tight fit, 1mm clearance either side. I also mounted the fan guard on the inside with some rubber mounts which I think looks quite sweet. If you get stuck where to drill the hole I can give you the measurements from my casing.

I did check my soldering with a multimeter actually. It looked good. Does it matter if the 2 Black ground wires (in a molex) go in the one or the other ground pin? (PSU plug)

I thought a holesaw was much more expensive, but it dosn't cost anything! So im really thinking about doing this. I just cant understand how to atach the fan itself to the hole? Im guessing i need 4 screws, but wont the fan just fall off?

Already bought a grill for $1.60, and im currently looking for a fan. Any recommendations, when it comes to brands? Oh, and please send your meassurements, that would be a huge timesaver! Did you place the fan over the CPU or over the extended CPU Heatsink? (if you have it extended..)

 

[rocket8080]

It shouldnt matter what ground pin you use I think. As for the fan I used a blue core cooler v1 fan, cost me a tenner in total. I removed the two pin female connector from the adapter board for the dvd drive and soldered two wires onto it. I then soldered the other end to pins 4 & 8 underneath the psu connector. This make a nice little fly lead and makes it easy to disconnect the fan when taking the top casing off. You have to take the fan off the plastic mount it comes on by undoing the four screws. After I measured out and drilled the hole I clamped the fan underneath and made sure it was nicely aligned. I then drilled the four holes with a 4mm drill bit and used 4mm x 25mm machine screws and 4mm nuts to fix it to the case. The fan sits over the extended part of the GPU heatsink. I get the xbox in a bit a take some measurements for you but my sons playing on it at the moment. If you dont want to use the core cooler v1 fan then Flashing 360 mentioned earlier about some blue 70mm led fans on ebay. From the specs they look ok. What are you using the molex for?

 

[jfelding]

It shouldnt matter what ground pin you use I think. As for the fan I used a blue core cooler v1 fan, cost me a tenner in total. I removed the two pin female connector from the adapter board for the dvd drive and soldered two wires onto it. I then soldered the other end to pins 4 & 8 underneath the psu connector. This make a nice little fly lead and makes it easy to disconnect the fan when taking the top casing off. You have to take the fan off the plastic mount it comes on by undoing the four screws. After I measured out and drilled the hole I clamped the fan underneath and made sure it was nicely aligned. I then drilled the four holes with a 4mm drill bit and used 4mm x 25mm machine screws and 4mm nuts to fix it to the case. The fan sits over the extended part of the GPU heatsink. I get the xbox in a bit a take some measurements for you but my sons playing on it at the moment. If you dont want to use the core cooler v1 fan then Flashing 360 mentioned earlier about some blue 70mm led fans on ebay. From the specs they look ok. What are you using the molex for?

Thanks. Ofcourse, i can wait! It will take some time before my stuff will get here, so i dont need them right at this moment at all.

I think im gonna solder a 3-pin header to a place near the RF-board's port. Then im just gonna hook up a fan and unplug it easily every time needed!

Currently, i have no molex cable in my xbox because of the previous red rings. I haven't tried again. I was going to put a molexsplitter in it, so that i could have both my sata harddrive powered (with a sata power adapter ofcourse), and possibly a fan. Im tired of having to unplug my harddisks external power every time i shut my xbox off. I forget it all the time .

Im not sure i understand what you mean about taking the fan out of it's casing. If i do that, how will i attach screws? And why would i? I probably misunderstood something.

But thanks a lot for helping me out! I really appreciate the great support, you are providing me!

 

[rocket8080]

Ive attached two pics for you. One is of the casing with the measurements. The another is to help with the confusion I caused about the fan mounting. I was also going to add the 3 pin fan header but heard conflicting things about it. It can be a pain to solder the header on apparently. Also some say is safe to use and others say that its on part of the circuit with the dvd drive which you dont really want to be stealing power from. Up to you though want you choose to do. If you go with the 3 pin fan header and use the core cooler fan then you will have to change the connector on the fan. I used the core cooler because at the time I couldnt find a blue 70mm led fan anywhere and the blue light matches the whisper fans at the back of my xbox. When cutting the hole I used the 67mm holesaw ( its a imperial ) because it doesnt show any gaps at the side of the fan and looks really neat. After you have cut the hole you will have to trim the plastic casing on the inside with either a stanley knife or a dremel for the fan to sit flush. I also made a cutout in the shielding so I could leave it on. Hope this helps.

 

[jfelding]

It shouldnt matter what ground pin you use I think. As for the fan I used a blue core cooler v1 fan, cost me a tenner in total. I removed the two pin female connector from the adapter board for the dvd drive and soldered two wires onto it. I then soldered the other end to pins 4 & 8 underneath the psu connector. This make a nice little fly lead and makes it easy to disconnect the fan when taking the top casing off. You have to take the fan off the plastic mount it comes on by undoing the four screws. After I measured out and drilled the hole I clamped the fan underneath and made sure it was nicely aligned. I then drilled the four holes with a 4mm drill bit and used 4mm x 25mm machine screws and 4mm nuts to fix it to the case. The fan sits over the extended part of the GPU heatsink. I get the xbox in a bit a take some measurements for you but my sons playing on it at the moment. If you dont want to use the core cooler v1 fan then Flashing 360 mentioned earlier about some blue 70mm led fans on ebay. From the specs they look ok. What are you using the molex for?

Aaah, i get it now! I think it was confusing because i dont have the XCM fan. I compared your very nice and illustrative pics with the ones on the XCM website to understand what you were talking about. I think i'll buy a normal 70mm fan for my stuff. Thank you very much for the measurements! It will be so much easier to get started with the drilling now! Im sure that others searching some information about this topic will find it useful too! I might get started this thursday, but im not sure. Will keep you updated, and some questions might come up, too . Again, thank you so much for spending your time on helping me!

 

[rocket8080]

Yeah if you got any questions I will do my best to answer them. As for helping, not a prob!! I would of liked to been able to start with some measurements myself. The tut on xbox scene is great but its a shame that it lacked the measurements. I spent a while making sure I had the hole placement in the correct position. When drilling the hole I removed the motherboard and fans from the chassis and screwed the top casing on. I then clamped it down onto the table drill. Also if you get a led fan with the wires taped on make sure they are stuck down well as mine werent and I snagged it on the cpu heatsink breaking one of the wires off the soldered point for the led. Good luck!!

As my old boss use to say " measure twice, cut once"

 

[big_ted]

My temps don't go much above 60 even when gaming hard,
I removed the dvd drive and used an xdrive, cut the mesh and plastics on the case and chassis from around the fans at the rear, then put a fan on top of the gpu off an old pentuim4. Taped up all the gaps around the fan shroud, set the fans to cut in earlier using flash tool and dropping the points when they should ramp up. Also fitted the rrod kit (never had rrod) but has heat sinks for the ram and south bridge. When quitting a game and going back to the fs dash the temp leds (on the rol) are normally orange.

Ted

 

[jfelding]

My temps don't go much above 60 even when gaming hard,
I removed the dvd drive and used an xdrive, cut the mesh and plastics on the case and chassis from around the fans at the rear, then put a fan on top of the gpu off an old pentuim4. Taped up all the gaps around the fan shroud, set the fans to cut in earlier using flash tool and dropping the points when they should ramp up. Also fitted the rrod kit (never had rrod) but has heat sinks for the ram and south bridge. When quitting a game and going back to the fs dash the temp leds (on the rol) are normally orange.

Ted

Wow, is that without the 12V mod and on a xenon? Nice if so. I was thinking actually. I didn't use arctic silver as my thermal paste. Instead, i used something from the brand 'stars'. Do you guys think it could make an actual difference if i used Arctic Silver? I realise that i should have used it at the beginning, but i didn't know anything about cooling or xboxs when i started.

 

[aero915]

Yup
Arctic Silver 5 can sometimes decrease your temperature by upto 5 Degress Celciues

 

[BGAMods]

i always use as5. the difference is not massive but worth it really. stay away from the cheap crap thermal paste on ebay lol.

 

[rocket8080]

Yeah artic silver is spot on . That is what ive used and im getting good temps with my jtag. I only ever get one orange light on my rol and thats the cpu. Flashing 360 have you ever used or heard of ic diamond thermal paste?

 

[BGAMods]

nope sorry mate. i have seen it on ebay but never bothered with it. just stick to what you know works well as5.