subject: My Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death Tale [print this page] My Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death Tale My Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death Tale
My Xbox 360 took a dump last year, and here's my story. I purchased my console almost a year after the 360 was released. I know, what kind of a gamer am I, but I wasn't sure at that time about an Xbox. I went from SNES to PS1 to PS2, so the natural progression was to wait for PS3 to come out. Well that all changed when a friend let me play a little Gears of War with him. I was hooked. I had to have a 360 ASAP and purchased one that night from eBay. We had a good relationship for a couple of years. I took care of it; in turn, it provided me with hours of entertainment. I was warned about the overheating, so I purchased a fan system (not an Intercooler, sadly), and thought it would never happen to me. Well, as I found out with 1st gen 360 systems, it's not if it will happen, it's when it will happen. The red ring is always lurking around the corner.
It happened one night. I wasn't even playing that much. Usually we can stay up for hours and hours grinding some Modern Warfare 2, and my fans will sound like jet engines, but the 360 keeps kicking. No, this was not one of those nights. It was unexpected. I was playing 1 vs. 100 with my wife. All of the sudden, the screen went black and I didn't hear my machine any more, just the low hum of my external cooling system. I looked down and saw the rings glaring back at me with a morbid, red stare. Of course, I thought nothing of it. Why should this happen now? The thing lasted almost 4 years. Some buddies of mine got red rings within the first year of purchase. For some reason, I thought mine was immune to the disease. I checked the AV cables, known to scare people be displaying red rings when unplugged, but this wasn't it. I knew what I had; I didn't want to admit it.
My next step was to contact Microsoft. You can go online in the red ring section and enter your UPC to verify a warranty. Surprise, surprise, my 360 was 1 year past warranty. I thought this was some kind of joke. I can see if I drop kicked the thing and tried to return it to Microsoft, they would deny it seeing as I had broke thecursed thing myself. However, this to me was Microsoft's wrong doing. I didn't build the faulty heat sink brackets (more on this later). So Microsoft will fix the manufacturers default for me, for $99.00 since I'm out of warranty. Oh, and did I mention that even after they fix it, it can still give me red rings in the future? Lovely. So, I could also buy a new Xbox 360 Arcade system for about $150.00, or, save my money and try to remod the machine and fix Microsoft's faulty parts myself. Well, I figured, if I break the thing I'll just have to buy a new one anyway. I Googled Red Ring of Death and found a beautiful instructable about how to rip apart a 360 and fix a faulty bracket that allows the CPU to get too far away from the heat sink and over heat. Knowing the repercussions, I gathered my tools and supplies and began to disassemble my major source of entertainment.
I was amazed at how detailed and easy the instructions were. I spent maybe 15 bucks on materials. I was also amazed that, after a few hours of playing with electronics that I had no business touching, I had successfully mounted a CPU on a new bracket, lathered with heat paste. Configuring this bracket was a little tricky, but after a while, I had all green lights again on my 360. I slapped the thing back together and let it run for a few hours. No more red rings! It's been almost a year now and occasionally, the thing will overheat, but power right back on moments later. I must have external fans on at all times. Nothing must be on, near or around the Xbox during play. I even taped a couple of old laptop cooling fans to the back of the system for added cross breeze. I did not buy a new console for $150 bucks, nor did I pay Microsoft the $99.00 charge. This to me was a success.
