Is why Xbox 360's break already come to light?

R

Rangers

Legend
In digging around at Xbox scene as a result of the Llamma guy's Elite teardown, I have come across what the Xbox scene posters believe is a distinct design flaw having to do with the "X-Clamp" on the 360 motherboard.

From "dokworm" At xbox scene:

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=588032&st=0

After reading some of the excellent detective work here re the red lights of death and going over the couple of dead consoles here with a microscope, I've come to the conclusion that in most cases the red lights of death is due to a simple design flaw, not to overheating or poor soldering.

We seem to be seeing consoles where the motherboard has flexed and a few of the solder balls or pads have given way at the corner of the CPU or GPU as pointed out by SMTRework and others.

Now why would a motherboard flex?

The answer is the heatsink clamp design.

If you look at the clamp design, *all* of the pressure to hold the heatsink down is in one tiny point. The centre of the X clamp has a plastic 'spacer button' that sits hard against the bottom of the motherboard and that causes all of the stress to push upwards (towards the bottom centre of both the GPU and the CPU.)

What is the reaction to that upward force? the corners of the motherboard flexing in the opposite direction.
Because the motherrboard is not screwed down to the chassis in the areas around the CPU and GPU the natural reaction is for the board to flex downwards slightly because of the pressure in the middle pushing upwards.

When the console gets hot, the solder balls may become slightly softer allowing the board to flex further and the break occurs.

Even if the soldering was perfect the poor design of the heatsink clamps means the corners of the CPU and GPU are going to be under tension.

So perhaps the fix would be to remove the clamps altogether, fit 'screw in' pegs to the chassis and screw down the motherboard and the heatsink so rather than tension being on the board to flex, it is actually encouraged to stay flat. The existing holes in the board where the clamp attached would be ideal.

So extra cooling and other measures may not do squat unless you remove the tension of the giant pimple trying to push up from the bottom.
Click to expand...



There is a guide to some Xclamp mod here:

http://copronymous.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/3rlod_fix.pdf

And another:

http://rbjtech.bulldoghome.com/pages/rbjtech_bulldoghome_com/XClamp.htm

But now, this guy's post claims it's some slightly different problem, I'm confused:

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=594487&st=270&p=3967116&#entry3967116

At any rate this is one of the alledged fix attempts in the Elite: epoxying the chips down:

http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/news/images/xbox-360-elite/360elite 048.jpg

And there was already a site that did this:

http://www.360resin.com/

Really I'm not sure any of this is the cause..but it might be. It certainly seems to me that qoute unqoute "overheating" is NOT the general cause of 360's problems, as overheating is just something that's very hard to cause without some kind of..dun-dun, design flaw..
 
Rangers said:
In digging around at Xbox scene as a result of the Llamma guy's Elite teardown
Click to expand...
Can we get a link to that please? :cool:

I have come across what the Xbox scene posters believe is a distinct design flaw having to do with the "X-Clamp" on the 360 motherboard.
Click to expand...
Interesting. However other hardware have used similar clamps (including many graphics cards) seemingly with no ill results..?
Peace.
 
Rangers said:
Really I'm not sure any of this is the cause..but it might be. It certainly seems to me that qoute unqoute "overheating" is NOT the general cause of 360's problems, as overheating is just something that's very hard to cause without some kind of..dun-dun, design flaw..
Click to expand...

Well, that's still overheating - if heat related issues cause system failure - it's just that the vector is more mechanical (via board stress) than previously thought, rather than through chip failure. Hopefully the epoxy addition will lower the rate of incidence.
 
After reading most all of the xbox scene post on the issue I ran across the tutorial. More or less everyone that hs getting the RLOD is able to fix it by this means, and they are claiming that if you make the change on a new system that it will lessen the chance of ever getting RLOD. (RLOD= Red Lights of Death)


Linky

I dunno if I believe what they are saying. You would think if that was the way of fixing the issue MS would have switched to using it a long time ago.
 
Diamond.G said:
I dunno if I believe what they are saying. You would think if that was the way of fixing the issue MS would have switched to using it a long time ago.
Click to expand...

It could have been switched a long time ago, i dont think to many people are opening up new X360 these days, a year after its been made.
 
Ostepop said:
It could have been switched a long time ago, i dont think to many people are opening up new X360 these days, a year after its been made.
Click to expand...

I guess we needs someone here to get an Elite and open it up. See if the X-Clamp has been removed/changed.
 
Diamond.G said:
I saw that post right after I posted my comment. I couldn't get to the page though. Someone else posted images of the mobo so I could see the epoxy on the edges of the cpu/gpu. I sure hope that is all that is needed.
Click to expand...

were you able to see this?

I can't tell a thing from it though. ;)
 
I've been following the board flex threads for the past couple weeks, and I just did the mod to my little brother's 360. Wouldn't even boot to the dashboard before I did the mod, even after I pulled it apart, put some AS5 on the chips, and reinstalled the heatsinks. But after I did the mod the damn thing booted right up and I played a few minutes of GeoW without issues. I gotta admit, I'm quite surprised.

I was skeptical that the mod could actually fix the problem, since I find it hard to believe the chips can get hot enough to actually reseat themselves. But maybe that's the root of the issue, solder that becomes malleable at a temperature a bit too low.

I'm interested to see how long the fix works for, as this kind of failure has got to be prone to reoccurring. Hopefully the modified heatsink mounting keeps things working.
 
JBark said:
~
Click to expand...

Nice to see the first B3D poster to confirm this. Not that I doubt the people at Xbox Scene, its just I hang out here rather there :LOL:

This method seems quite intriguing in that almost every person who's tried it works the first time :eek:

Im actually getting a little tempted to buy a broken 360 on eBay to kinda see if I can pull a miracle aswell :LOL:
 
Diamond.G said:
The board on a graphics card is also smaller than the 360's board.
Click to expand...
Yes so reasonably it ougth to bend even more easily. Yet we've not heard of any such problems?

Besides I was under the impression the clamp isn't actually mounted to the motherboard holes at all so I sort of wonder how it could warp the mobo?
Peace.
 
Rainbow Man said:
Yes so reasonably it ougth to bend even more easily. Yet we've not heard of any such problems?
Click to expand...

You have that completely mixed up. The larger the board is, at the same rate of 'bend', the total angle of its curve will be greater. Not only that, but there is more scope for more variation in heat, which could lead to more problems had the board not been engineered properly.
 
Okay, I haven't seen chip heatsink attachments since replacing my Athlon 2500's HSF with a silent copper job, but what I'm seeing here makes no sense to me! The X-clamp is adding an extra layer between chip and HS, right? A layer of steel, no less. And there's no thermal paste between the clamp and HS? That to me looks like a thermally inefficient setup. From the sounds of it, GPUs are doing the same, but...why? Heat transfer must be compromised with this setup.
 
Got an update on my fix. Played GHII for about 30 minutes and the screen went gray. After that it started locking up more frequently. Never got the 3 red lights, but it's very flaky. Talked to my brother, and it turns out he kept playing it all the time for weeks, even though it it was crashing all the time and locking up. So I'm guessing whatever damage was done to his is irreparable. The mod did improve it a lot, but not enough to be stable. Maybe I'll take the mobo into work and try using a heatgun or the wave solderer.

Oh well, no big loss, since he got it for free.
 
Altivec said:
You have that completely mixed up. The larger the board is, at the same rate of 'bend', the total angle of its curve will be greater.
Click to expand...
But to get the same rate of bend the pressure difference would have to be enormous. Laminated fiberglass is very stiff. And the total angle is irrelevant in any case since the angles at the point of concern (the big chips) would be similar.

Not only that, but there is more scope for more variation in heat
Click to expand...
Is it really? GPUs can get mighty hot. Almost boiling hot actually.

Besides if the backing plate does not connect to the motherboard at the corners, how could it get warped in the first place..?
Peace.
 
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