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[mRBulletPr00f]

Yeah Reflow the GPU. And I was thinking maybe the Thermal paste Contracts and Expands when it has differnt temperatures. Thats the only thing I can see cause the first problem in your first post. My advice Reflow the GPU and change the AS5 and add a little more this time. And add a 70mm fan over the CPU and power it with the 3 pin fan header. I think that would work.

[Wilhelm_I]

QUOTE(BlackWar @ Jul 6 2008, 03:52 PM)

This is an interesting topic, which brings up an interesting question....does the 360 require a certain amount of heat in order to operate properly in the long run?

The reason why I bring this up is because the 1st 360 I got (right before xmas last year) died towards the end of last month. Now, I know the track record of the 360's and such, but this failure should not have occurred, because a week after I got it, I noticed that it was running rather warm and bought an intercooler for it.

Now, with the intercooler I never noticed it running warm, always cool as a cucumber, but it still died (error 0020). I was able to bring it back to life and all, but I cant help think, was it running too cool? I know logically thinking, any PC, the colder the better, but considering the cold joint issues with the 360, is a certain amount of heat needed to keep the cold solder joints "soft" to allow for flexing of the board due to heat? I know that this by any means makes no sense, but this is microsoft we are talking about after all.....  

This is just random when you get the ROD because of a cold solder joint the 360 might work after a restart because the solderball expanded and reconnected it.
The RODs occur though because of the bending mainboard which takes the solder balls under pressure and the fact that the chips become very hot and then cool down quickly which causes the solder balls to get cracks.
So heat can be a way to get a 360 back to work but the cooler you keep it the better is still up to date since the cooling down to room temperature will cause less damage when the temperature difference between chip temp and room temp is less...

[brandogg]

Keeping the 360 cool will not break it. The Intercooler isn't a guarantee that your system will work, all it does is pull some more air from the back. You don't want the board to flex, that's part of the problem. If the system was cool enough, it wouldn't flex, and the crap solder joints wouldn't break.

[Wilhelm_I]

QUOTE(BlackWar @ Jul 6 2008, 05:25 PM)

toweled it afterward (which in the end fixed it). You can do a search her in this forum section to read about it, it is on the 2nd or 3rd page.

Just a warning for noobs who might read that, dont use the towel trick to overheat your 360 just unplug the fans or do the llamma method if you want to overheat the GPU only...
The toweltrick might damage other components since you are not only overheating the chips, you overheat the whole machine as the air is locked in.

[BlackWar]

yes, I did forget to mention on that.

If ANYBODY does the towel trick, please, for the love of god (and your 360), read up on it extensively before you do this, and if you do try it, only try it in short amounts of time. Just like ANY piece of electronic equipment that requires additional cooling, they build up heat FAST, so it doesnt take long at all to "bake" em this method, and if you are not carefull, just as long to kill em.

TBH with everyone reading this, here is the pros of a towel trick....

1: everybody has a towel, so its cheap to do
2: it is very quick to do (no disassembly needed)

and the cons of such a trick.....

1: if you are not carefull, it WILL shorten the life of your 360
2: same as above, but it will flat out KILL it
3: in most cases (about 98% of em), this is ONLY A TEMP FIX TO A PROBLEM THAT CAN BE FIXED BY MORE PROPER METHODS!!!

It is up to you to weigh the odds.....