Is Your Xbox 360 Broken? If So This May Help!
Is your Xbox 360 broken? The Xbox is a powerful HD console and like most things electronic is great when it works. Unfortunately the sleek design causes a common overheating issue. However this is easy to fix and cheap to do so also. This is depicted by all lights around the power button flashing red.
The ring of death is usually attributed to an overheating fault, I say usually as sometimes it can be down to hardware faults. Before we carry out this repair I think it would be a good idea to make sure that we are fixing the correct problem. Luckily for us the Xbox will tell us what the problem is with it.
This repair should only be performed if your Xbox is outside of its manufacturing warranty. If it is not this will invalidate your warranty.
To remove the outer case of the Xbox use a small flat head screwdriver to press on the numerous clips around the Xbox, if you have pressed the clip correctly it will make a clicking sound, once all clips have been pressed the case will lift off.
The next thing to do is remove the screw from the metal casing revealed when the outer case was removed. For this you will require a T9 torque drive, this is a screwdriver with a star shaped head. After the removal of these screws half of the metal case will lift off revealing the motherboard. The next step is to disconnect the DVD drive and the power cable for the fans. Once this has been the done the motherboard will lift out from the other half of the metal case.
Next flip over the motherboard to reveal two x-clamps, once these have been removed the heat sinks will lift away from the board. Under these heat sinks there are three processors use alcohol rub to clean them up, once clean apply some thermal compound to each ensuring that the whole of the processor is coated and that the coating is even.
Now we need to reattach the heat sinks to do this you should acquire some screws and washers instead of using the x-clamps this will allow you to achieve a better connection between the processors and heat sinks.
