Thread: How to fix xBox360 RRoD

Right, Just so you know none of these methods will work for long. (unless you get lucky, and the towel trick is very likely to fry your capacitiors.

I have my own part time games console repair business in the u.k.

The real problem with all x box 360, is combination of poor cooling and bad design. All leading to the common RROD and more.

The CPU and GPU chips are connected to the motherboard, not with a series of pins like a coventional PC, But they sit on a set of small "balls" of solder.( there are problems with the solder as well due to the new lead free manufacturing laws but thats a whole different story). In the manufacturing process the chip is set onto the balls and the whole board is heated till the balls melt and solders all the connections in the chip to the motherboard. (note: this method is also used to attach other chips on the board).

Now What happens is due to the poor design of the Xbox cooling system the chips get very, very hot...........hot enough to cause the thremal cut out on the board to shut the unit down. In some cases it will also melt the solder in certain parts and cause perminant disconnection from the chip.

The towel, x-clamp fix are all just variations of getting the chip to reconnect with the solder beads either through exerting extra pressure on the board, (xclamp fix) or to heating the chip up to the temprature that all the solder joints remelt causing the reconnection of all the points again, (towel trick).

They will all make reconnections, (working xbox) and in somecases this will work for the life of the "Box" but what normally happens is the next time you have benn playing for a long time, in a warm room the "(fix)" fails again.

The Only Real method of making sure your RROD stays away is to "reflow" the motherboard, now again there are homebrew methods on the net but to realy do it propely you need to use a Aoyue 720 IR workstation or similar to do the job. (at least without frying the capacitors) It can also be done with a hotair gun, capacitor shield and an IR laser thermometer, (however too much heat and to close with the gun and you will blow the Chip off the board!).

The termal paste is only to help the heat transfer from the chip to the Heat sink/fins and remelting this has sweet F.A to do with repairing the problem except if it is not replaced the heat build up that this causes. the problem reocurrence is much much quicker!

Get a pro to do the repair, and ask them how the repair is being done if they say anything else than "reflowing the chips" the motherboard then the chances are that they are a set of cowboys that will do a quick and nasty xclamp fix!

Any questions?

saw this topic and thought i would add to it as i just recently fixed a 360 with e74 fault.

sorry but +1 again for the towel trick being a bad idea.

i have my consoles in a cupboard under the stairs out of the way. they are then connected to a plasma which is wall mounted in the living room. gotta say when the 360 is on the cupboard , which isn't particularly small, gets pretty hot i certainly wouldn't want to restrict the airflow from the console in any way.

wrapping a towel round the xbox so that it overheats may by chance get the chip to reconnect but what are you doing to the rest of the components with all this heat?

i went for the xclamp fix. (bolts with steel washers (two washers + one spring washer)

even just doing this cured the e74 fault (1 red light), but graphics would sometimes go a bit funny. so i baked it (no not in the oven - which btw i have seen a tutorial on!) - basically have the xclamp fix done with the bolts hand tight, take the fans out of their location and sit them ontop of the cpu heatsink, this then keeps the cpu cool so that the xbox will keep running without any alarms for overheating and at the same time the graphics chip will heat up. also have 5 x £1 coins wrapped in insulating tape sitting on top of the hana chip.

leave it on like this for 20 minutes, then switch it off and let it cool for at least 30 minutes, tighten up the bolts and you're done.

ok i guess this is heating the console and may damage it but its only heating certain areas, not keeping all the heat in and heating the whole console. to me its the best way for people to do a diy fix. the thought of a heat gun and "giving it a try" didn't apeal to me either.

just my 2p, since i done the xclamp fix as above console ran and is still running perfect.

Yup, the good old E74 fault, pre heat to 175 deg, then top heat in 15deg stages till you get till 15 seconds at 295deg, cool naturally, problem solved, glad you put a little weight on it, But You must be very, very careful not to move, jog or juggle the board or weights in any way at all or all those lovely beads smear into one large connection........oops!

Canny people us Scots............!

Wouldnt reccomend the towel trick.

If you have the cash you should by the newer 360, its alot less prone to RROD.

I'm lucky though never had a problem mine, touch wood.

Originally Posted by zzenn

I'm lucky though never had a problem mine, touch wood.

Touch wood? Isn't it knock on wood?

Yeah, don't use the towel... I know three people who have done it, two had bad luck, it worked for the other one. 66% failure rate is not worth it.

I recently repaired mine from RRoD. God those X-clamps that come with the xbox are horrible and lets not even get into the thermal paste. That thermal paste, after I removed all their junk paste. I added some artic silver now that is some good stuff. Now my xbox works perfectly.

nice tut, but never works for longer than a few months

Couple things you should do in this order if you have rrod

1) fix the rrod. Towel trick wont fry anything off the bat, your box will just shut down. Keep doing it though, and your going to burn it up. Its just a 'loose' gpu that you can fix with some washers and goo off, and arctic silver. easy stuff... no soldiering.
2) do the 12v fan mod. Yeah the xbox is much louder, but, thats because the fan is actually working. If your anal, buy a better fan as well.
3) on the front of the board, next to the ring of light, there is 3 soldier points for another fan, so, put one in (this time you need to soldier)

You can fix everything up in less than an hour if you have the stuff. I like tutorials so Ill write a few on fixing it up, if you need help now, just pm me and ill walk you through it.

Originally Posted by ph3nom

Is the xbox360 just like a computer inside MB,cpu video card etc???

yes pretty much.

I had my Xenon 360 fixed using the x-clamp. it worked for 6 months and it died again.

3RL is a defect. THere's no permament fix for it but you can get lucky and extend it's lifespan for a while.