QUOTE(Johnwinger @ Feb 14 2008, 02:16 PM)
As a computer tech who knows what causes the RROD, I know there is no cheap solution for repair.
This entire topic is BULLSHIT. There is no way to solve RROD without replacing the motherboard.
Want to share your knowledge of why there is no way to fix it without replacing the motherboard?
I have had pretty solid success with fixing it. I think most people that fail on the fix are just doing it incorrectly or incompletely.
Basically I do the following.
1) Try to reflow the chips. this means getting the board as flat at possible and getting even pressure onto the corners of the chips and heating them up until I can see with the scope that the broken corner(s) has now remerged and is no longer a break. the resulting joint will not be *great* but is serviceable. At the very least try the 'towel trick' or similar to get it to stop RRODing if you can *before* doing the rest.
2) Replace the clamps and check the heatsinks for warping and lap them if required. fit pads to the edge of the chips (stealing them of dead VGA cards at the moment) to get the pressure onto the edges. The big thing here is to ensure not *too* much pressure on the heatsinks and to make sure you are getting an even and complete fit of the HS to the die. broken fixes sent to me have often had the clamps uneven causing a minute air gap.
3) Use a decent thermal paste and enough of it to work properly.
4) And this is the big one for longevity - FIT EXTRA COOLING. If you don't do this, I would almost guarantee your fix will fail within a few months. I cut away the shielding and make as the airflow as unimpeded as possible, especially to intake cool air from the front of the box to get to the GPU and CPU. Fitting an XCM extra fan, or ramping up the case fans to run at higher speed are cheap ways to keep your fix fixed.
To keep it icy cold, if you don't mind the noise, cut down old SocketA athlon CPU fans, you can make them just fit as they are really low profile and screw it to the back of the CPU heatsink to force air through it. makes a huge difference.
5) Run it for a week and then re-check everything, and check your temps with a laser guage to make sure your cooling has made a difference.
This seems to work for 95% of boxes, I have a number that have been going strong for over a year. my personal one is now at about 7 months without a glitch, but I am in the midst of watercooling it to cutdown the noise.
I hate the 360 hardware now, it is too unreliable, it really is junk and MS hasn't really made big changes to it to solve the problems.
but you can in most cases resurrect your dead machine *if you take the time to do it properly*. Some will be unfixable of course, and if you have warranty, then definitely don't attempt a fix yourself.
What I would like to see instead of a crappy $12 'kit' would be a proper cooling solution with a radically improved GPU heatsink, a better shroud and an extra CPU and GPU fan. A cooling kit is really what is required, but no-ne seems to make.
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Topic: Team Xecuter Back from Dead: 360 ROD Repair Kit (Read 400 times)