Xbox 360 Reliability Update

By: chronic cramps on October 05, 2007 [<<][>>] [back to archive index]

These days all people want is an Xbox 360 that won't break down. And who can blame them with guesstimations of faliure rates in the 30 percentile. Imagine drinking DC with 3 out of 10 cans exploding in your face, I'd say bring on the wheatgrass! This makes dropping $300-$500 on a console all the more difficult.

To complicate matters, Microsoft has admitted to... NOTHING! in this letter collectively written by an entire regiment of lawyers & signed by Peter Moore, the big dude at Microsofts Xbox division.

Left with rumors & heresay, we turn to the gaming community forums (infiltrated by Microsoft, Sony, & Nintendo, no doubt) for answers. Rabbi, feel free to edit this post as you see fit. Xbox 360 Reliability Topics

* RROD (Red Ring of Death) caused by a series of design flaws. 1, uneven chip heatsink clamp pressure warps the motherboard eventually resulting in 2, a partial disconnect between soldered components such as the CPU and motherboard. 3, heat generated by the chips may be within acceptable operating specs, but soften the solder and allow greater flexing of the circuit board, explaining why overheating was thought to be the only problem. Read this post at Xbox Scene for more information. This post explains the motherboard warping issue.

Repairs and Solutions If the Xbox is under warranty, send it in to Microsoft through this link, if out of warranty, being that the warranty seals have been tampered with, there are a few fixes you can try. The X-clamp fix fix-for-the-3rlod.pdf (66k file) fixes most cases of RROD according to the comments on that post, but worth noting is the Heat Gun method where you attempt to re-melt solder between the motherboard and chips to mend any broken connections.

* What's my Lot number?
360's with Lot # 734 or higher are supposedly built with a new chipset "Falcon" with smaller ( 65n manufacturing process ) chips that run cooler, and one would guess, don't suffer the same malfunctions as described above. But what about the other design flaws???

*The Halo 3 Edition 360 consoles are not exempt from the "design flaws", check the lot number instead.

* Regarding Lot numbers. According to this post on the Team Xbox forum, the 4 digit lot number represents the year and week of manufacturing in a yyww format. So 0734 would be week 34 of 2007. But reports of new stickers placed on top of the original by...??? shows a different lot number versus the actual manufacturing date. So if your box has two stickers on top of another, perhaps the only way to get the REAL lot number is to open the box and check the console...?

chronic says: My lot # is 0730 :(
Posted October 05, 2007

ArabRabbi says: That sucks. But, to play the Devil's Advocate: just because you have a 360 from an earlier lot does not mean that you WILL have issues. It just means that issues may be more likely. And, since you've got one now, you also have access to Micro$oft's 3-year warranty or, as I like to call it, "Band-Aid."
Posted October 06, 2007

chronic cramps says: True, my only gripe is that there's now no point in keeping it boxed up for sale or as a collectible for the future. But I could always wait until the christ-mas season and pawn it off on the 24th to some desperate parent for a meager profit, and hope that I can still get my hands on a new one after that...
Posted October 06, 2007

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