Microsoft Xbox One X (XBOX) Reviews and Impressions

[iroboto]

I don't know that the existence of an art book means a title has a huge budget (Shovel Knight). Given an assertion as fact, I'd like to see some evidence to support that. The $40 price was apparently its price for a long time and plenty of people preordered Sea of Thieves at that, which to my mind is the only evidence we have of budget. It's available on Amazon UK for £40, which is below average. Doesn't really prove anything, but does shed a little doubt on the idea of SoT being an $n hundred million investment. Hence a request for some real info one way or another. If it's just a guess, Johnglen should change his comment to, "I guess," or "seems to me," or somesuch to show it's just an uncorroborated feeling.

Yea I should have kept my pre-order on amazon. The price is now 80CAD when it used to be $39.99. I guess they were trying some sort of kickstarter, to get an idea of interest before releasing more capital. At $80 a pop now, I imagine it's going to be a bigger game than what we've seen.

 

[matthias]

there are around 200 people working on sea of thieves for how many years, 3? this thing doesn't come cheap.

 

[Lefungus]

It's missing a big exclusive AAA game to show its capabilities IMHO

Crackdown 3 and sea of thieves are AAA , don’t see how one can argue that. They are huge budget games, esp. sea of thieves.

If you were replying to me, I agree with you. I really meant a big exclusive AAA game *released* at the same time as the xbox one x. Like Breath of the Wild & the Switch.
What do I have to show off the capabilities ? Not much we cannot find on PS4 Pro already.
(offtopic: Sea of Thieves look nice, but Crackdown look overcooked)

 

[Rangers]

I saw this on "gamernexus". what does anybody here think?

First off, the Xbox One X dumps heat out the back. Its cooler is a glorified reference blower design for a GPU, except an order of magnitude larger. We found that, in its “instant on” mode, the console was burning a constant 0-2W, and somehow managing a constant ~50-52C when “off.” That is to say, the console was told to shut down, but would keep operating at high enough power loads to generate 50-52C readings on our rear-mounted thermocouple. In a room with an ambient of 26-28C, this is clearly impossible without some processing going on actively (a truly “off” device would be room temperature, after time to reach steady state). All that’s to say that users of the Xbox One X should be positioning it in open air environments. Don’t cram the thing into a cabinet or other tight quarters – it’ll run hot, and it won’t age well.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3117-xbox-one-x-fps-benchmarks-destiny2-cod-ww2-assassins-creed

How can 0-2 watts even generate 50C heat?

52c translates to about 125 degrees in english, so that doesn't sound too dangerous?

 

[BRiT]

Without knowing their testing methodology, this sounds like they took the temp immediately when the console was turned off after long stretches of it running full load. Sort of like reading the temp of an oven immediately when you turn it off after cooking up dinner. "Oh look at that, the oven is off but the oven reads 475 F!"

*shrug*

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How can 0-2 watts even generate 50C heat?

In a large CE device, it shouldn't. You'd have to localise that energy to a small part. Was their thermocouple touching anything?

52c translates to about 125 degrees in english

125 outmoded degrees, American, you mean. Based on a Dutch scale the whole world moved on from because it was shit and unscientific. But yeah, 52 C is shockingly warm, so I think their method is faulty.

Without knowing their testing methodology,...

They state that temperature should be room after allowing to settle, so I assume they'd factor that in. But I doubt it's representative of the real situation. I don't think a several-watt mobile part at full load hits 52 degrees - it's incredibly improbable XBOX is generating heat of that magnitude while off. It hits only 62 degrees under load!

Edit - they contradict themselves. In the power section with their data plotted, the idle temp is 40 degrees.

With the console powered off and in an effective sleep state, the device pulls between 0 and 2W from the wall...Thermals during this time are plotted as ramping from 40 degrees Celsius immediately upon power on

 

[Scott_Arm]

Are they measuring air (exhaust) temp, heatsink temp or something else?

 

[Scott_Arm]

We found that, in its “instant on” mode, the console was burning a constant 0-2W, and somehow managing a constant ~50-52C when “off.” That is to say, the console was told to shut down, but would keep operating at high enough power loads to generate 50-52C readings on our rear-mounted thermocouple. In a room with an ambient of 26-28C, this is clearly impossible without some processing going on actively (a truly “off” device would be room temperature, after time to reach steady state).

A truly "off" device would be room temperature, but a truly active processor would draw more than 2W ... So how is it 50C at 2W? Unless there's something I'm missing here. One of those two measurements is wrong. Either their temp is measuring high or their power is measuring low, at least it appears that way.

 

[BRiT]

Or the area in which they're measuring the temperatures is too close to other massive heat generators such as Audio Video Reciever and large screen TVs.

 

[Globalisateur]

I saw this on "gamernexus". what does anybody here think?



https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3117-xbox-one-x-fps-benchmarks-destiny2-cod-ww2-assassins-creed

How can 0-2 watts even generate 50C heat?

52c translates to about 125 degrees in english, so that doesn't sound too dangerous?

They had a peak of 181W in both Assassin's creed Origins and COD and average of respectively 170W and 173W in those game using dynamic resolution (meaning the engine always tends to use the maximum resources available).

With Destiny 2 they had an average of 110W.

Are they measuring air (exhaust) temp, heatsink temp or something else?

We have thermal benchmarks, which use a thermocouple mounted to the back-side of the APU

 

[Scott_Arm]

Oh, somehow I missed the part about the thermocouple being mounted to the apu. So it's basically a surface temp of the apu. Still seems a bit high, considering the temps under load. In games the temp caps out around 60C, which means they have a delta of 10C from 2W - 180W. Does not compute.

 

[MrFox]

Very easy to get 50C from 2W with the fan off.

DF also measured 68C air outlet temp but the die itself can still remain below 90C because vapor chambers are efficient heat spreaders. Higher temp means less air required to remove that amount of heat. It's impossible to remove 180W with less air moving than 155W unless they raise the temperature threshold of the air outlet.

I will quote myself, because I want to brag about how I was correct.

Turbulence causes noise, I think it looks fine from that perspective. Heatsink is longer so more restriction, so higher rpm required for the air to move. But less air required because more surface. It should even out and have a very hot exhaust. (which sounds bad but hot outlet means very efficient cooling, it's a good thing!)

 

[BRiT]

As Shifty pointed out, they also state they measured the console at 40 C when turned off, contradicting their 52 C statements. They should have measurements at room-temps when initially attached the thermocouple with the console truly off. If they don't then they didn't calibrate it properly. Sloppy all around.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Very easy to get 50C from 2W with the fan off.

Hmm I'm not too sure about that... With that heatsink and vaporchamper/copper setup. The numbers from the wall was also measured to be 0-2W and the temps 50-55c

According to Anandtech the power consumption in the Instant on-mode is actually about 10W, which makes more sense to get those temps imo, as does the separate energy saving mode consuming around 1W, which is what I suspect actually being measured by gamersnexus of the wall.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11992/the-xbox-one-x-review/6

 

[MrFox]

Hmm I'm not too sure about that... With that heatsink and vaporchamper/copper setup. The numbers from the wall was also measured to be 0-2W and the temps 50-55c

According to Anandtech the power consumption in the Instant on-mode is actually about 10W, which makes more sense to get those temps imo, as does the separate energy saving mode consuming around 1W, which is what I suspect actually being measured by gamersnexus of the wall.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11992/the-xbox-one-x-review/6

Yeah I agree, 10w makes a lot more sense, they said it was 26-28C ambient. I was thinking about the enclosure keeping the air in a pocket of isolation, but it's not enough for such a big difference I suppose.

 

[Grall]

How can 0-2 watts even generate 50C heat?

If airflow is very low things can get quite hot. Like, small LED bulbs for example pulling a few watts, yet hitting ~85C because of no active cooling.

I wouldn't worry about the thing suffering of it btw, it'll be engineered for these temps.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Hmm I'm not too sure about that... With that heatsink and vaporchamper/copper setup. The numbers from the wall was also measured to be 0-2W and the temps 50-55c

According to Anandtech the power consumption in the Instant on-mode is actually about 10W, which makes more sense to get those temps imo, as does the separate energy saving mode consuming around 1W, which is what I suspect actually being measured by gamersnexus of the wall.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11992/the-xbox-one-x-review/6

10W with fan off would likely pull those temps (no active airflow, small enclosed space not designed for passive cooling). 50-55c sounds like a lot, but it's nothing relatively speaking. At those temps, there is no reason to turn the fan on to cool the SOC.

So, definitely agree with your assessment.

Regards,
SB

 

[MrFox]

If airflow is very low things can get quite hot. Like, small LED bulbs for example pulling a few watts, yet hitting ~85C because of no active cooling.

I wouldn't worry about the thing suffering of it btw, it'll be engineered for these temps.

Yes but a heatsink of that size is probably way better than 5degC/W even with zero airflow and the air inside the enclosure rising to 40C.
The other theory, that they tested the 10W stanby instead of the true off state, looks too perfect to ignore.

Also the off state the power regulators for the soc and memory should be off, the chip itself should be zero. Only some psu losses and some on board microcontroller should be actually wasting power.

 

[AlNom]

No wonder it's (allegedly) popular in Finland.

 

[Scott_Arm]

No wonder it's (allegedly) popular in Finland.

It's 14C in my apartment because of this record cold day and my cheap-ass landlord not turning on the heat yet. Thinking of putting the xbox underneath the covers with me tonight.