x360 motherboard pic

[hey69]

don't know if it s already posted yet

The guys over at the french Xbox website xavbox.com posted a picture of what looks like the Xbox 360 motherboard. This could be a picture of the Xbox 360 beta dev kit or a picture of the Xbox 360 test unit.
The site also informs that under the leftside fan you have the ATI R500 Xenos GPU and under the rightside fan you have the 3 core (update: or 2 core for these beta boards according to teamxbox.com) IBM PowerPC CPU.
The picture matches the general look/design of the motherboard showed in the ourcolony video back on May 12 when the Xbox360 was first officially presented to the public.

 

[Guden Oden]

I wonder what the point is with all the blue LED bling-bling on that thing. OK that it might be a prerelease dev board that might have extra debugging indicators in the form of LEDs or somesuch, but it's still a little curious.

I expect the twin fans to be replaced with a crossflow heatsink in final units. Considering the narrow height of X360, the fans would probably have to be vastly powerful (and noisy) if they sat right on top of the sinks since there's not a lot of room for a big tall sink.

 

[Shark Sandwich]

I expect the twin fans to be replaced with a crossflow heatsink in final units. Considering the narrow height of X360, the fans would probably have to be vastly powerful (and noisy) if they sat right on top of the sinks since there's not a lot of room for a big tall sink.

I believe MS said the final version would include two fans, however one of them will turn off during movie playback.

 

[Tap In]

I expect the twin fans to be replaced with a crossflow heatsink in final units. Considering the narrow height of X360, the fans would probably have to be vastly powerful (and noisy) if they sat right on top of the sinks since there's not a lot of room for a big tall sink.

I believe MS said the final version would include two fans, however one of them will turn off during movie playback.

not sure of that but supposedly 2 of the the Processor cores will be shut down for power saving mode as will any other non essential features.

I'm not sure those fans will be there as a liquid cooling of some sort will be on the chips.

I thought I read exhaust fan(s) only

 

[Guden Oden]

If the two fans are located on the CPU and GPU heatsinks, all they'd do would be wafting around air inside the case until the system cooks. Rather, I would say the fans would be arranged as intake/outlet fans (either two of either, or one of each).

 

[Shark Sandwich]

I'm not sure those fans will be there as a liquid cooling of some sort will be on the chips.

Supposedly they're using a heatsink/heatpipe cooling system. I'm not sure whether that will provide strong enough cooling, or if they will need to put a fan directly on the heatsink.

 

[gosh]

its gonna be water cooled, but it will have fans will take the heat out of the case, the water will just take the heat from the cpu/gpu to the fans

 

[Shark Sandwich]

its gonna be water cooled, but it will have fans will take the heat out of the case, the water will just take the heat from the cpu/gpu to the fans

That's not true from what I've heard. In the 360 teaser trailer they said it was water cooled. But, the next day it came out that they were actually referring to heatpipes. Heatpipes do have some liquid in them, mainly amonia, but it's not the same thing as watercooling in the ordinary sense of the word.

It would make no sense to use water cooling in a console anyway. Water cooling doesn't magically make heat disappear, you still have to take that water to a radiator to dissipate the heat. The reason water cooling works so well for computers is because it can move that water to a radiator with a much larger surface area to cool. You also need a pump to move the water. Watercooling just isn't a viable option for a console, where size and price are such major concerns.

 

[Farid]

That's not true from what I've heard. In the 360 teaser trailer they said it was water cooled. But, the next day it came out that they were actually referring to heatpipes. Heatpipes do have some liquid in them, mainly amonia, but it's not the same thing as watercooling in the ordinary sense of the word.

That's correct, and yes it will be a heat pipe.

 

[Pozer]

its gonna be water cooled, but it will have fans will take the heat out of the case, the water will just take the heat from the cpu/gpu to the fans

That's not true from what I've heard. In the 360 teaser trailer they said it was water cooled. But, the next day it came out that they were actually referring to heatpipes. Heatpipes do have some liquid in them, mainly amonia, but it's not the same thing as watercooling in the ordinary sense of the word.

It would make no sense to use water cooling in a console anyway. Water cooling doesn't magically make heat disappear, you still have to take that water to a radiator to dissipate the heat. The reason water cooling works so well for computers is because it can move that water to a radiator with a much larger surface area to cool. You also need a pump to move the water. Watercooling just isn't a viable option for a console, where size and price are such major concerns.

Actually they only said it would use some form of sealed 'Liquid Cooling" in addition to air cooling. Water Cooling was never mentioned. This led most people to speculate a Heatpipe design. I know thats splitting hairs. I think MS stated that in an attempt to get enthusiasts interested.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

If the two fans are located on the CPU and GPU heatsinks, all they'd do would be wafting around air inside the case until the system cooks. Rather, I would say the fans would be arranged as intake/outlet fans (either two of either, or one of each).

Why? You can have intake and exhaust case fans pulling cool air over the CPU/GPU array, with those two fans simply pulling the air in over their heatsinks and hopefully exhausting that out the other fan. It shouldn't be any different than a single fansink like we have in PCs. PEACE.

 

[Tap In]

If the two fans are located on the CPU and GPU heatsinks, all they'd do would be wafting around air inside the case until the system cooks. Rather, I would say the fans would be arranged as intake/outlet fans (either two of either, or one of each).

Why? You can have intake and exhaust case fans pulling cool air over the CPU/GPU array, with those two fans simply pulling the air in over their heatsinks and hopefully exhausting that out the other fan. It shouldn't be any different than a single fansink like we have in PCs. PEACE.

that may be true but MS has said that there wil not be fans on the chips (size and power reasons?) in the final build but I imagine anything is possible until production starts.

 

[swaaye]

Water cooling systems need to be flushed occasionally. I don't think Xbox360 will have a drain plug lol. I'm sure they are talking about heatpipes. Everything has a heatpipe these days... My ma's Pentium MMX notebook from '97 had a heatpipe cooler.

 

[Powderkeg]

They will use a similar liquid cooling system to the new Dell workstations. (Ironically, it also has a similar carse design)

A heatsink with sealed copper tubes running through it, and an enclosed fan system on top to cool the liquid.

 

[Guden Oden]

Why? You can have intake and exhaust case fans pulling cool air over the CPU/GPU array, with those two fans simply pulling the air in over their heatsinks and hopefully exhausting that out the other fan.

Because that means more fans without it getting any more efficient. You'd just heap on more hardware to solve the same basic issue, creating more cost, more noise and drawing more power to do the same thing.

It shouldn't be any different than a single fansink like we have in PCs. PEACE.

But PCs have very large cases compared to a console, and they cool very inefficiently; hence the invention of the BTX chassis. There's no point in having a fan strapped to a heatsink with a shoebox sized console, the heatsink fan would end up recirculating the same air every few seconds. With a crossflow solution with the air moving from an input over the sink and then to an output, you'd achieve the same or better cooling with less hardware involved.

 

[mesyn191]

BTX was designed for cooling Intel's planned 150w+ CPUs (Tejas), not cuz ATX is soo crappy. Take a look inside a Dell sometime or even a Antec Lanboy, the cooling in either of them is quite good and quiet.

 

[a688]

The 2 case fans will go in that slot on the rear of the motherboard just like it does in the current xbox.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

Because that means more fans without it getting any more efficient. You'd just heap on more hardware to solve the same basic issue, creating more cost, more noise and drawing more power to do the same thing.

But PCs have very large cases compared to a console, and they cool very inefficiently; hence the invention of the BTX chassis. There's no point in having a fan strapped to a heatsink with a shoebox sized console, the heatsink fan would end up recirculating the same air every few seconds. With a crossflow solution with the air moving from an input over the sink and then to an output, you'd achieve the same or better cooling with less hardware involved.

The fans on the heatsink it just to push air over the heatsinks, and the CFMs don't have to match that of the intake/exhaust fans. Intake and exhaust fans control the volume of air flowing through the case. The fansinks just control direction of airflow in the case to make it more efficient (even if diminishing returns). That way you have a better chance of getting the required volume of air flowing over the heatsinks to dissipate the heat. There should still be a main air channel in the case that allows heated air to be pulled back out.

So air goes in the intake, gets pushed down to the mobo/heatsink by the fansinks, then taken out the exhaust. Without ducting, it's a crapshoot really, but it's the way most vertical cases have been cooling since the ATX form factor came about.

My Antec had had two intake fans with greater CFMs than the exhaust. The air came in from the bottom-front, and would be pulled up to the rear of the case where I had two smaller exhaust fans with lower CFM. The PSU was right above the CPU fansink, and I made sure the combined CFMS of the 2x exhaust fans+PSU fan < 2 intake fans to keep positive pressure (and thus keeping dust out). The airflow was pretty good since I sealed up all gaps, so the fansink on the CPU (and to a less extent the GPU one) would just draw air from the cool "gulf stream" and push it down over the heatsink. The hot air would escape sideways and eventually merge with the main air channel en route to the exit. There is some air that gets recirculated back into the air stream passing over the fansink, but the inefficiency wasn't enough to overcome the overall cooling effect. I think this is what you're getting at, but IMO, the air that gets thrown back into the stream has a relatively negligible effect on cooling compared to not having a fansink, since you're just hoping you can have enough of the air directed over the heatsinks eventhough they occupy a relatively small space in the overall case. That's why you need the fansinks, b/c otherwise you'll have more air going around the heatsinks that through them. It's inefficient, but outside of refrigerated solutions and ducting, I don't know what else you can hope to do. PEACE.

 

[PC-Engine]

don't know if it s already posted yet

The guys over at the french Xbox website xavbox.com posted a picture of what looks like the Xbox 360 motherboard. This could be a picture of the Xbox 360 beta dev kit or a picture of the Xbox 360 test unit.
The site also informs that under the leftside fan you have the ATI R500 Xenos GPU and under the rightside fan you have the 3 core (update: or 2 core for these beta boards according to teamxbox.com) IBM PowerPC CPU.
The picture matches the general look/design of the motherboard showed in the ourcolony video back on May 12 when the Xbox360 was first officially presented to the public.

Thanks for posting that. I hope that puts to rest the notion that Xbox is big because it needs all that cooling stuff.

Watercooling just isn't a viable option for a console, where size and price are such major concerns.

Of course it is. In fact there's a watercooled laptop with a waterpump out on the market. The whole system is hermetically sealed too so no draining required.

 

[MechanizedDeath]

When they say watercooled, surely they don't mean water. Water's thermal properties are (for lack of a better term) garbage. You don't need antifreeze or anything, but certainly a solution that doesn't vaporize at 100C. :? PEACE.