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[Xbox-Scene]

Xbox 360 Overheating Caused by Protective Foil on Heatsink? *Updated*-- Posted by XanTium on March 9 22:49 EST
Arakon from the german modding community modcontrol.com informed us about a new discovery they made with assistance from the guys at gamestore24.de and konsole24.de.
They checked on 2 independantly bought Xbox 360 consoles and found that the protective layer on the GPU heatsink's heat transfer pad didn't get removed.

On the left you see the CPU heatsink and how the thermal compound should normally look like. On the right you see the ATI GPU heatsink and people who are used to assemble PCs themself known this isn't how it should look like. It's not just a thick layer of compound ... there's actaully a protective foil on top of the thermal compound.

(IMG:http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/xbox360/overheating-gpu/JD500015_s400.jpg)

On the left a close-up of the protective layer/foil on top of the heat transfer pad. On the right the protective foil has been removed and placed next to the heat pad. This protective layer is probably placed by the manifacturer of the heatsink and is used to protect the heat transfer pad from dust, but should normally be removed just prior installing the heatsink on the GPU. The way it's installed now by MS the GPU chip makes contact with the protection foil instead of the heat transfer pad. This can of course cause cooling issues for the graphics chip as for optimal cooling performance there should just be a thin layer of thermal pad between the GPU chip and heatsink.

*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.

(IMG:http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/xbox360/overheating-gpu/JD500011_s200.jpg)(IMG:http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/xbox360/overheating-gpu/JD500022_s200.jpg)

Watch video (in german too, but it clearly shows the protective foil as they remove it): here[youtube.com] | here[xbox-scene.com] | here[konsole24.de] (16MB)

News/Pictures/Video courtesy gamestore24.de, konsole24.de and modcontrol.com.

[blackchild1101]

Rushed?

[appleguru]

I certainly hope this is just on a few select consoles and not the majority...  

[Bigsam411]

Yeah this does not sound too promising for 360's.

[jherre6]

Well. Well Well..  Look at what we have here..

Burgandy..  No More No Less.

jherre6

[Glock.45]

My GPU heat sink had that foil.  I was wondering what that was.  I never had a problem with my xbox with the foil on.  I just wanted to put some artic silver 5 on instead.  I could see why that would be a problem.  I glad I decided to fix something that was not broken.

This post has been edited by Glock.45: Mar 10 2006, 05:46 AM

[jm2u]

Yeah that'd do it.

This post has been edited by jm2u: Mar 10 2006, 05:49 AM

[downlowfunk]

wow interesting.  this has to be isolated to a a couple lots.      Friday afternoon at the assemblie lines.

[Unregistered007]

QUOTE(blackchild1101 @ Mar 10 2006, 04:08 AM)

Rushed?

MY EXACT F******* REPLY

[schizzlefuzz]

How did they fuck that up?   What are those Chinese doing in those factories?  Probably not working, by the looks of it.

[Xeriak]

I wonder if my 360's have that crap protective foil on the thermal paste too...
But I don't wanna void warranty just to open up and see for myself. =/

[Virtucon]

looking on the brighter side(of this stupidity) we now know why some 360s had a cooling problem and that it is not an enherent problem that will eventually plague other systems.  it also means that some people with cooling problems can fix it them selves.  hopefully something similar is the problem with the PSU.

[eDeus]

QUOTE(Bigsam411 @ Mar 10 2006, 05:20 AM)

Yeah this does not sound too promising for 360's.

Whats that supposed to mean?

QUOTE(Unregistered007 @ Mar 10 2006, 06:08 AM)

MY EXACT F******* REPLY

No need to shout, that was what everyone was thinking.

- My thoughts are, you cant really get cheap unskilled technicians/engineers to build the xbox 360's. But you certainly can get cheap unskilled workers to assemble them!

- Always an excellent read when a major manufacturing job like this gets stuffed up (somewhere along the 1700 component line). Cant wait to see what the future iPod's, PS3's, etc have in store for us... rumble controllers that shock you, video out cables that fry your TV inputs, its an exciting time! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

P.S. and MS can still get us with these rumoured dodgy xbox360 upgrades. Hurray! the fun never stops.

This post has been edited by eDeus: Mar 10 2006, 06:25 AM

[Moltdar]

shouldn't be someone sueing MS for this because it CLEARLY is their fault then and not some random weird crap going on with the memory or anything.

[F1R3STORM]

i took my heatsinks off (put on as5 and some ramsinks) no cooling probs b4 i did this also i didnt have the foil also my thermal paste was applied very well