Just got a Xenon and have a few questions...

[LeMieux]

So I helped a buddy move this weekend and he had an xbox that he was pretty sure had the RROD. He didnt want it so it gave it to me. I dont have a power cable for it it (my buddy hasnt dug his out of his moving boxes yet) so i didnt get a chance to power it up, but i know these things are prone to overheating and I just assumed the thermal paste was gonna be toast.

I'm an electronics tech (day job at least) so i opened up the case (factory seal hadn't been broken) and blew all the dust out, pulled the heat sinks off, and lo-and-behold the paste was toast. Cleaned it completely off and roflowed the whole board in a reflow oven (gave it a good inspection under the microscope on both to and bottom to make sure there were no solder bridges or unsoldered pins). Then I applied new, very high quality thermal paste to the CPU/GPU and stuck the stock heatsinks back on. I also got rid of the x-clamps and used some more robust screws with nylon washers to get the spacing right and not strain the PCB too much.

After some googling and general internet stuffs i have found that I have a Xenon motherboard. Manufacture date is December 2006. I forgot to take note of the disc drive brand before closing it back up but my buddy was sure it still worked. Unsure if i can JTAG it as i dont know what version dash it has, but I do have plenty of JTAG cables so at least I'm good there. So now that you know where I'm at, i have a few questions.

Shoud I bother upgrading to the better falcon style heatsinks or would the better paste be enough?

Should i be worried about newer games creating more heat in such on old board?

Should i add more fans/change fan configuration? Negative or positive case pressure?

Any advice and tips you can give me would be great. Not at all new to electronics but totally green to these Xboxs. Never had one before and now my imagination is running wild with what i can do with it.

 

[GeekHeat]

As we all know xenon's are very unreliable and if the dash is past 2.0.7371for jtag then it can't be done with rgh. So by all means have a mess with it but I wudnt start ploughing any money into it as it wud probably not last long.

 

[Krafter]

If it can be JTAGed then why not. It won't cost but penny's to do it. You need only a way to read/write the NAND. But as said above, I wouldn't put a lot if money into a xenon. Besides, you don't even know if you fixed it yet or not. I'm sure the thermal paste was in need of replacement but there's a relatively good chance that the CPU or GPU is toast because of the overheating.

 

[jsinger47]

1. Xclamps are just fine, don't remove them.
2. Xenon heatsinks are just fine, don't change them.
3. The only fan mod you should do is adjusting the Target temperatures in the SMC_CONFIG

 

[LeMieux]

Thanks guys. Yeah I probably would have dumped a bunch of cash into it if you guys hadn't warned me. Still haven't had a chance to turn it on yet. I didn't see any scorching or really any evidence of major overheating. I work on stuff like this every day at work so I know what to look for. I'm gonna stick with the bolts I used in place of the xclamps for now at least. Its already back together and I don't feel like taking it all back apart.

Even if it is jtaggable idk if I'm gonna do it. I just want to play some halo, which I would assume it will do just fine without JTAG. I'm gonna haveto do some research on that SMC_CONFIG.

Again, thanks for the help guys! You probably get dumb questions like these a lot but I either couldn't find answersor was getting overwhelmed by overly complex answers.

 

[LeMieux]

Another dumb question but I haven't found a straightforward answer to it... I have a brand new 1TB external USB hard drive that I haven't used and probably never will use. Actually haven't even opened it. Is there any way I can use it with my Xbox? The 20GB HDD on it I know isn't gonna cut it and I'd like to avoid buying a new one if I can. Thanks guys!

 

[GeekHeat]

Another dumb question but I haven't found a straightforward answer to it... I have a brand new 1TB external USB hard drive that I haven't used and probably never will use. Actually haven't even opened it. Is there any way I can use it with my Xbox? The 20GB HDD on it I know isn't gonna cut it and I'd like to avoid buying a new one if I can. Thanks guys!

u can only get the maximum of 32gb whatever size hard drive u use on a retail/stock xbox. U can use all of the 1tb HDD on a rgh/jtag xbox.

 

[UndeadZombie II]

I think you might be able to use 1TB, if you get it formatted correctly while it is connected to a computer. But I could be wrong, You might as well try, because I don't think it will hurt anything.
Also I think the main problem with xenons overheating is the fact that the gpu heatsink is too small and underneath the dvd drive. I suggest that you first make the dvd drive external. look up and buy a pair of "airflow cables" http://www.ebay.com/itm/XBOX-360-CA...ideo_Game_Cables_Adapters&hash=item2335871d9f which are the same as the normal dvd power and sata cables, but a lot longer. (Also the picture in the link shows the drive sitting on top of the xbox, this is not what I had in mind. The relocated fan will get in the way on the drive this way. I suggest that you instead set the drive to the side of the console and maybe with a hole cut in the side to allow the cables to go through the side of the xbox instead of through the front.) With the dvd drive out of the way, I suggest you next, upgrade the gpu heatsink to something bigger, an identical cpu heatsink would do ok. and last, I suggest that you take the fan inside the xbox and place it on top of the two heatsinks. and create a big enough hole in the case for the fan and there you go, that should improve it a bit. I only did part of this idea on my own xbox. the part with the external dvd drive with a hole cut in the side of the xbox, this was a jasper. But I think it should work the same with your xenon. Or you could just watercool it, but that would probably be a bit too expensive.

 

[jsinger47]

Ignore the part about cooling being the cause of Xenon issues.

Adjusting the SMC_CONFIG fixes this better than any coming mod you could do.

Cooling mods are merely fun projects and may look cool cosmetically. Functionally, not that helpful

 

[LeMieux]

Thanks again guys! I ordered a power supply and it came in on tuesday, so i plugged it in and it booted up just fine. It wasn't connected to the internet but it required me to do an update before i could play any games. I ended up doing it, realizing later that I probably ruined any chance i had of jtagging it. But anyways. I played a couple games just fine for about 20 min, and then the power supply that i THOUGHT was an official Microsoft unit caught fire, literally. Turns out i was sent a chinese knock off (specifically ordered an Official unit to avoid stuff like this) instead. The seller is being very good about it and is taking care of it, but still very irritating. I'm just glad to know i have a working xbox! From the feedback I'm seeing on here I'm not expecting it to last a really long time, but I got the thing for free so I'm not complaining.

I stuck a few thermocouples in there to monitor temps easier. In the 20min i was actually playing my CPU got up to about 55C and my GPU was right at 50C. These seem pretty safe to me but you guys would know better. Is this too high for the seemingly fragile xenon?

 

[ObeyNation]

I have a jasper and normally I'm around 65 c GPU and 54 cpu