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[No Hands 55]

Yeh ive been wondering the same thing. im about to do an oven reflow myself and have been looking at many differnt tutorials and decided to combine them all lol. i did the tape around everything but the chips a couple times then im gunna put clothes over the tape then foil over the clothes. it cant hurt much its just extra insulation is how i see it

[Xebozone]

I found another one. This guy seems to know his stuff:

http://www.overclock...ad.php?t=607948

although he didn't use any flux.

P.S. sorry for posting again, but I'm not allowed to edit previous posts for some reason

[Xebozone]

Ok...I have done it. I prepared my xbox for the oven fix in the best way I think possible from what I have gathered. I will cook it tomorrow.

I do have one question however, won't the aluminum foil / aluminum tape (which I used to seal the gaps between the clothing/aluminum foil) conduct heat, and get so hot that the solder will flow onto it, and potentially short/damage everything? This is the first time I have done it, so I don't know...

Anyways, what I did was:

Apply no-clean flux to the ram, cpu, gpu and that chip with the xbox logo on it (I forgot what it's called ). This particular one was a 'pen' with an absorbent end. When pushed down, it opened a valve that would run flux to the end. By holding it down, flux ran out until it ran under the chips. I applied flux to all four sides of each of the above mentioned chips.



Seal the sync/eject buttons with a blob of blu-tac. (it has good heat resistivity, and helps seal the gaps).
Create a shroud around the cpu, gpu, ram and that (chip with the xbox logo) with blu-tac. I also made it quite thick where the caps were for extra protection. It also acts as a nice guide, and helps to stick the insulation on accurately later.





Start insulating the other areas with lots of socks. I used two sock layers. Stick it down to the blu-tac and motherboard with aluminum tape. I chose to use this because it is heat reflective, and will more than likely not result in a sticky motherboard after the cooking



Once done with the sock layers, add a layer of old t-shirts for extra insulation. Seal and hold with aluminum tape where it is close to the motherboard, and use duct tape where you don't mind melted tape. Aluminum tape would be better, but is more expensive, and I don't mind.







5. Covered it all with 2 layers of aluminum foil (SHINY SIDE UP so that it reflects the heat, not traps it!). Yes, I know I didn't fully follow my guide on the bottom, but I figured it doesn't matter as much as the top







Took me several hours...I don't know how you guys manage to do it an under an hour...but I suppose experience helps... Does it seem good to go? Also, my question about shorting above?

[xmugen360]

you actually only need to keep the eject and sync buttons covered if you heat over to 415 and leave the mobo in for 8 mins the caps wont melt at that temp but those parts will have done a couple of these and it has saved the xbox look around on youtube for others who have posted results...key here is after you remove from oven press down on the processors especially the small gpu dye and the ram chips i use an eraser end of a pencil and my fingers has worked like a charm for me with problem 360's

[Treadstone]

Let us know how well it goes? also i would take the thermal pads off the ram chips on the bottom of the board before you stick it in the oven,and personally i would have put it in the oven uncovered for about 5 hours at a low temp of around 70c, first to straighten the board out.Also I don't know if its a good idea to press down on the chip once you take it out,if the solder is still soft and you press down to hard you could squish a few of the solder balls together, and you would then have to have it reballed

[Xebozone]

QUOTE(Treadstone @ May 21 2010, 06:49 PM)

Let us know how well it goes? also i would take the thermal pads off the ram chips on the bottom of the board before you stick it in the oven,and personally i would have put it in the oven uncovered for about 5 hours at a low temp of around 70c, first to straighten the board out.Also I don't know if its a good idea to press down on the chip once you take it out,if the solder is still soft and you press down to hard you could squish a few of the solder balls together, and you would then have to have it reballed

Damn, if only I had you here to tell me about the pre-heat before I did this. Oh well...maybe if it doesn't work, I will try with the pre-heat next.

If it fails again, do you recon I can just stick it in there for 5 hours, and not have to re-flow it? My spidey sense tells me no...but I could be wrong.

Yeah, agreed. I saw a bad photo of a ram chip that moved when a guy accidentally touched it. That put me off. Also, I don't think there is any place in my city where I could have it re-balled, so I'm gonna try avoid that risk.

thanks for the advice.  I will let you know how it goes...probably within 24 hours.

EDIT:
Also, in my last post at the top, I mentioned my concern with the solder flowing onto the foil. What are your takes on it? Perhaps the foil doesn't get hot enough to allow solder to flow onto it, but I don't know...

[Xebozone]

Continuing my life story:

This cookie tray was too small to have the xbox sit in it, so I placed it sideways.I lined the tray with aluminum foil (shiney side up) to help reflect the heat upwards from the bottom.


I pre-heated the oven to 150, and placed inside with the ram chips in front of the GPU facing the door, as I didn't want direct heat on that section of the motherboard from the fan as the sync and eject buttons were on this side. This is probably overkill, but better safe than sorry.

I put it in for 150C for 1 min, 180C for 1 min, 200C for 1 min, and 230C for 5 min. The cooking went well. There was no smoke. The duct tape melted, but it's strong, so it held together nicely. I didn't get any brown spots on the board from inappropriate flux, like I have seen on another post.

Afterwards, I turned a fan on in the room, opened the windows, and left the door ajar for a slowish cool



Once cool/warm I took the box out the oven...



I slowly began taking it apart. The aluminium tape held down VERY nice, and didn't leave any sticky residue. The blu-tac also held it's ground, but became sticker. I found the best way to remove it was slowly pull it along it's path, and then dab and roll off any excess with a remaining piece of blu-tac. After removing, it was barely visible that it was even there on the first place!



I re-apply thermal paste, add two nice big 1mm washers I found onto the GPU RAM with double-sided thermal tape. I have seen many people fix these with a lot of thermal paste, but I tried this once, and it didn't work out very well (the washers kept falling out when screwing on the heat sink) and posed a risk of electrical short.



I then put on the CPU and GPU heat sinks. 1 metal washer under the board, 1 nylon on top, followed by another metal washer, then the heat sink (these are all the washers I have available to me). I also added some extra heat sinks on the RAM, the ANA chip (yes, I learned the name ) and a couple others. These were fixed with more double-sided thermal tape.



I then apply RBJTech's heat shroud mod.



I Was able to play COD3 for over an hour (then I had enough). Wasn't able to play for 15 minutes before RROD before! Xbox is in the bottom-left of the image.



So far so good

I also found some interesting information:
http://www.nexlogic....-Soldering.aspx

QUOTE

"The lead-free alloy used for BGA solder balls has a melting point of 217ºC and requires a minimum reflow temperature of 235ºC to ensure good wetting. Maximum reflow temperature is in the 245ºC to 260ºC range, depending on complexity and density of the board."

So I wonder if the oven got hot enough...I am not even sure it reached 230C... Perhaps it should be cooked at 245-260? Also, my oven may be rather slow at heating up...but I didn't have an oven thermometer to check...but regardless, it seems ok for now.

Hope this helps anybody else who is puzzled.

Thoughts?

[Xebozone]

Ok, it's been about a month, and my box died again with a 0100 error.

So I'm going to try what you said (heat the mobo in the over at 70C for 5 hours with no insulation),
re-do what I did previously,
and finish it with the Team Hybrid fix to prevent further flexing (once the Australian store has parts again).

I'm worried that at 70C, there may be damage. Is this justified?
Do you have any more advice? Should I try heating it longer/hotter?

Cheers

[MadMaxGR]

Don't worry at 70C there will be no problem. Nothing is gonna melt, just get hot