So, I have an Xbox 360 Xenon that has been RROD'd. It from Gamestop, presumably, because it had their used 360 box. It usually crashes while playing the startup animation, though I did get it to play a few seconds of Halo:CEA's Intro movie once. It began freezing during Xbox Emulation mode, when I was using a physical copy of Crimson skies: High road to revenge (fantastic game). After a month of this, I'm playing Crimson Skies, when it decides to freeze again. No big deal, just reset it. I do so, and it it begins to freeze in the middle of the startup animation. Bought a new slim 4gb Xbox, and put the Xenon in the closet. 7 months later, I'm writing this thread. Is there a way to repair the Xenon, and are there any mods I can do to it that do not involve soldering?
Not using soldering you could replace the thermal paste and apply the xclamp fix. If that doesn't work try the heat gun reflow.
I wrote this rant up a while ago and have this in my sig on a different site, but here: You need to accept that there is no magical cheap/free way to permanently repair your horribly designed xbox 360motherboard. The fact that people sell a service of cooking a motherboard then putting on some bolts instead of the xclamps is sickening. There are countless errors that the xbox 360 can throw, I can think of 20 different issues all across the board that could cause 3 rrod. Yes, the most common are caused by the GPU/ the GPU solder balls, but it could also be CPU, Ram, NAND, southbridge, ANA, overheating, cut trace, even the PSU can cause the board to 3 rrod. It takes time, research, and a lot of fancy (and expensive) equipment to be able to truly repair such an abomination of hardware. For the classic gen. 1 boards, with 0102, 0110, 0020, etc. the issue should be addressed with a full reball of the CPU, and GPU, this being done using the proper equipment, not a bloody heatgun. An SMC/ BGA rework station (the most expensive ranging from $8,000-11,000) should be used, whether it be hot air (I use a Aoyue 968+) or an expensive IR unit. The goal would be to reach the recommended profile temperature for that motherboard as accurate as possible to set the existing solder balls into complete liquid form before lifting as to prevent a micro fracture in the chip. I won\'t get into detail but from what I have said already you should be able to see my point that performing methods such as: The towel/ toothpick trick The oven trick X-Clamp replacement (Can be beneficial if done correctly) Thermal paste replacement (Not a solution to anything unless there is extreme overheating, just a good precaution) The Penny trick Heat gun (the idea behind this is correct, but most people will blast their entire board with far too high of temperatures and melt half the circuitry. If you can control the heat and air speed and measure it with a thermocouple, it will work just the same as a rework station. I have done a full GPU reball using a heat gun instead of my aoyue, it was simply a proof of concept test and should not be applied) There are many more, just search \"How to fix xbox 360 RROD in 5 minutes\" on youtube and watch all the 12 year olds destroy their $200 Christmas present These methods may allow your console to \"work\" for 12 hours (at most), but they all do sever damage to the motherboard and only instigate the underlying cause. There was my super rant /over If you are going to repair something, then do it right
