The problem with broken 360 explained!

[dukmahsik]

yaye, im glad im waiting until the next batches

 

[kyleb]

Probably not a mistake. Some commercially available thermal tapes actually do use aluminum foil

Example:
http://www.aavidthermalloy.com/products/options/tapes.shtml
(See models T405R/T412)

Likely they used several different types of thermal tape, some of which used aluminum foil like the models in the above link.

With a thin little strip of aluminum foil that peals right off and leaves what looks like a more comon thermal pad behind?

 

[turkish a. punkass]

wish it would have came with a slot loader. *drool*

 

[Gremmie]

Any answer you'll get here is only going to be speculation. Those in the know - and that'll be certain higher-ups at MS, IBM and possibly ATi/NEC - will be guarding such information very closely - they're valuable trade secrets after all.

Yea, I figured it would all be speculation, I just thought that there are probably many people on this board that would be able to speculate much better than I could on the subject.

Barring the odd anecdotal "evidence", I don't think there's any significant heat issues with the 360 as it is. Other than the cooling fans being two noisy sons of bitches that is, but that's a rather different issue.

The fan noise is actually one of the things that irritates me the most. The few X360's I've been around I thought were quite noisy, especially the DVD drive. I'm hoping they quiet the fan noise pretty quickly.

 

[scooby_dooby]

It's obviously not a shim... It's a heat-conducting tape of some kind, with what looks like a metal foil on top that's supposed to be removed before use. Since it seems to be metal, I don't think the heat conduction would be significantly impacted by this mistake, it'd be worse if it was waxed paper or maybe plastic. In any case, heat is literally pouring out the back of my 360, so if there's tape over the GPU chips then I don't even dare to think of how hot the air coming out the back ought to be.

well teh guys at xbox-scene are saying this is intentional, hard to tell who actually know what they;re talkinga bout though:

This is not a manufacturing oversight. They just assumed the foil would be more thermally conductive. Intel did the same thing on every P4 socket 478 heatsink they shipped except they placed thermal compound on both sides of the foil.

He is absolutely right. This foil was intentional. Foil like this used to be very common. The foil is placed on the heatsink so in case the heatsink ever needs to come off, you don't need to clean it/apply a new coat of thermal paste just to put it back on.

First let me say I know more about Thermal mediums than the people that broke this story, I test thermal pads and Materials pretty often, Here's the last article I published regarding Silver thermal pastes, which resulted in a recall.

MS did not forget to peel off anything and this theory they forgot to peel off anything is completely inaccurate.What the video shows is a Thermal pad, Thermal pads are layered, and what you see in the pics and the video are nothing more than the aluminum carrier layer peeled back, this does not prove MS forgot to peel off a layer in manufacturing. What you see is the layers of the thermal pad itself

You want to know my opinion as to why the Xbox's are overheating? It's very simple, Thermal pads suck, combined with improper ventilation

The Xbox stuffs a Hot running CPU into a small form factor case, combine this with a thermal pad and its a recipe for overheating. The reason they use a thermal pad is simple, it's cheap, and it offers some degree of protection for the cpu in regard to the Xbox being mishandled (like being dropped)

Arctic Silver 5 is a general purpose TIM, (Thermal Interface material) which is slightly capacitive, Ceramique is a general purpose TIM that is not capacitive at all, Arctic Silver 5 perfrms slightly better than Ceramique.

Here's the bottom line, Any Thermal paste, even the cheapest silicone based white stuff is VASTLY superior to ANY thermal PAD in terms of thermal dissipation.

If MS wants to stop this Overheating issue, they can do one of two things, One is stop using a thermal pad, and the second is improve the airflow in the Xbox to better cool the components.

 

[Guden Oden]

Well, I have little to add to that quote of yours other than thermal pads don't neccessarily suck, as there are materials out there that are quite good. Other than that, well, not much, except the more layers of [whatever] one has between the heat source and the sink, the worse the efficiency's going to be. So if you have a pad, versus a pad with a layer of foil on top, the one with the foil is going to perform worse.

That's part of why CPUs with integrated heatspreaders on them run hotter than when you pop the cap off them.

*Edit:
Oh, and if there's foil over the pad, that could have some effect on its function... Pads are meant to be sticky and gummy and glue themselves to whatever they're cooling. If there's foil over the surface, a proper bond between them won't be formed which could harm heat transfer... So perhaps the jury's still out on this one.

 

[OtakingGX]

There's no magic involved in heat transfer. Thermal pads are "sticky and gummy" and do conform to the surface of whatever they are meant to cool. A foil is maleable, and sitting on a thermal pad, will do the same. The reason you want something in there, even silicon paste, is because a flat metal heat sink on a flat silicon chip will have little tiny voids between both materials. These voids don't conduct heat well and you have less effective area for heat transfer.

A metal foil will conduct heat better than a thermal pad. The extra layer of material will contribute to more resistance to conduct heat. If hte thermal pad, though, is thinner by the thickness of the foil, it will conduct heat better. The foil can also act as a sort of heat spreader, so any hot spots on the chip will be spread out over the whole surface.

 

[Ruined]

Note that this has also been added to the original website's news story:

*UPDATE* Several people on our forums say that this 'Indium' foil has probably been placed there intentionally, is part of the thermal pad and should not be removed. Apparently similar foil is used some OEM PCs, P4 and some PC GPU chips. While it looks like most people agree that normal thermal paste/compound without such a layer usually works better, one of the advantage of such a layer is that a heatsink can easily be re-installed without re-applying thermal paste after you removed it. You can follow the discussion about it here.

 

[randycat99]

Point of information- a piece of metal needs significant thickness to achieve any sort of heat spreader effect. The less conductive it is (aluminum vs. copper), it needs to be even thicker. A layer of foil will have zero heat spreading capability.

 

[NANOTEC]

Point of information- a piece of metal needs significant thickness to achieve any sort of heat spreader effect. The less conductive it is (aluminum vs. copper), it needs to be even thicker. A layer of foil will have zero heat spreading capability.

 

[pipo]

MS response

There have been a few stories around pointing to a video and photos claiming faulty installation of some Xbox 360 parts. I did some digging, and have this to report.

The video and photos posted by German blog GameStore24.de show thermal interface pads that are not installed incorrectly. They are installed per specification. This foil eliminates the need of a protective liner, which simplifies the final assembly process and minimizes shipping concerns and contamination issues.

THERMFLOW T558 provides the high performance properties typical of free-film phase change materials with the added benefit of easy removal. MULTIPHASE thermal interface pads are phase-change materials specially formulated for use in high performance devices requiring minimum thermal resistance for maximum thermal performance and component reliability. It provides the high performance of typical phase change materials with the added benefit of improved thermal stability over conventional phase change pads. It is a 0.005 inch (0.13mm) thick, inherently adhesive film that softens at device operating temperatures resulting in “grease-likeâ€￾ performance. T558 has been coated on one side of a conformal metal foil carrier. It is easily attached onto a heat sink or heat spreader, leaving the metal foil surface exposed. This foil eliminates the need of a protective liner, which simplifies the final assembly process and minimizes shipping concerns and contamination issues.

http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2006/03/10/533618.aspx

 

[Guden Oden]

There's no magic involved in heat transfer. Thermal pads are "sticky and gummy" and do conform to the surface of whatever they are meant to cool. A foil is maleable, and sitting on a thermal pad, will do the same.

Nevertheless, a foil is not AS malleable as a gummy pad, and will leave voids and such inbetween the two surfaces. And as already pointed out, foil isn't a capable heatspreader, that's nonsense.

 

[Shompola]

Well if the foil is good enough or not remains to be seen. But we atleast know that MS didnt forget to remove them heh,

 

[DeathKnight]

Yeah, the whole "MS forgot to remove the foil" debacle is stupid. ANY thermal pad which has ever had to have something removed before use never used metal foil as the item to be removed.

 

[OtakingGX]

Aluminum has a thermal conductivity of 240 W/(m*K) whereas a pretty good thermally conductive tape will have one of 1.40 W/(m*K) (Silicon is 150 W/(m*K)). Compared to the foil, the thermal tape is a brick wall for heat transfer. You will get a lot of heat trapped behind the thermal tape.

If you could measure temperature on the surface of the GPU while it's running under the heat sink I'm sure you'd find it to be nearly uniform. Despite the fact that heat isn't being generated evenly across it, because of the foil and the tape you should get the same temperature across it.

 

[Guden Oden]

But we atleast know that MS didnt forget to remove them heh,

True!

And as I already stated, I don't think the presence of metal foil would impact the heat transfer ability significantly enough to cause the death of the console. Especially if the pad is designed to be used with the foil still present!

 

[randycat99]

Aluminum has a thermal conductivity of 240 W/(m*K) whereas a pretty good thermally conductive tape will have one of 1.40 W/(m*K) (Silicon is 150 W/(m*K)). Compared to the foil, the thermal tape is a brick wall for heat transfer. You will get a lot of heat trapped behind the thermal tape.

The miniscule thickness of the material (which does figure into the thermal resistance of the object) should tell you the effect is a lot less in magnitude than a "brick wall". The k is not ideal, yes, but it's not like this is a .050" layer of tape (which would be a brick wall).

If you could measure temperature on the surface of the GPU while it's running under the heat sink I'm sure you'd find it to be nearly uniform. Despite the fact that heat isn't being generated evenly across it, because of the foil and the tape you should get the same temperature across it.

The foil is not thick enough to be a heatspreader. Consider that big chunk of metal (the heatsink) that is mounted to that GPU. That might have something to do with evening out the local temperatures, ya think?