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[Wilhelm_I]

Hello ,
The fact that some of my repaired 360s sooner or later ROD'd again was annoying me like most of the people on this forum.

Well but I had an idea.
I was wondering how you could apply even pressure on the GPU and I found a way...
The other X-Clamp replacements/Fixes only apply pressure on the center of the main chips(CPU/GPU), however the main problem is that they are reversing the effect that the X-Clamps had on the chips.
This flexing makes the fix less permanent and this flexing is one of the reasons why the fixes 360s often fail again sooner or later.
The solder balls are stressed and so they loose contact...

My fix applies pressure on the whole area of the chip not only the center, so all directions of the chip are taken under the same pressure and the solder balls stay connected.

I have been working on this for 5 months now and fixed quite a couple of 360s with it and they are all still working.
At this point Id also like to thank bosnia_9 who helped me with the testing...
I am confident that this fix will last way longer than the average of 1-3 months that the other fixes usually lasted.

I posted it on my own website that I am working on at the moment because the tutorial has a lot of pictures and the forums dont allow so many(there are around a 50 pictures ^^)
I hope this is not a problem...

It is also my duty to point out that 90% of this has been discovered by the fellow members of this forum like Lawdawg, RBJTech and others, I only improved it a bit, so thank you guys!

Here it is, I hope it will help you and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to send me a PM.

• Wilhelm's Improved X-Clamp Replacement Tutorial
• Wilhelm's Improved X-Clamp Replacement Tutorial

Wilhelm

[bosnia_9]

Let me be the first to say, this technique works great! I had success with it and the xbox is holding up strong!

*knocks on wood*

[chadives]

I knew you had somethin brewin up when you said you had a different method of xclamp replacement
Looks good, hope it works well.  very sound thinking on this one, obviously the height of the washers between heatsink and board is very crucial to prevent stressing the board.  I always just trusted that the height of washers provided in kits was right, probably not a good assumption.

I have noticed that the nylon washers can compress a little under heat and pressure, do you guys have any thoughts on that?  Maybe a ceramic or another more nondeforming, non cunducting material?  Do they make anodized washers?

Cheers on the Tut

[badducky]

seems very nice...

I actually just did the usual x clamp replacement, also a little bit different from the usual turorials, but xbox is running fine now

I want to ask you, are you sure that my xbox will brake again in the next 3 months? aren't there xbox consoles that were fixed with the usual x clamp replacement and that are still running till this day?

[Wilhelm_I]

QUOTE(badducky @ Aug 1 2008, 05:06 PM)

seems very nice...

I actually just did the usual x clamp replacement, also a little bit different from the usual turorials, but xbox is running fine now

I want to ask you, are you sure that my xbox will brake again in the next 3 months? aren't there xbox consoles that were fixed with the usual x clamp replacement and that are still running till this day?

Thats why I wrote "average", some worked only for a couple of minutes others worked for up to 4 months, a few havent broken up to this day.
There are also people who have got theirs running for over a year on here but I for myself had results that were a lot better than this since I am using it none of the 360s broke again...(well it has only been like 4 months but still better than what I experienced before I started fixing them like that)

[HackerSupreme]

What about hot glue? Put a little dollop on each corner. Hot glue is kinda easy to mold, even while dry, so the heatsink might be able to smash down on teh glue.

No wait. Clean off the die, then put some plops of hot glue on all sides, THEN, put a credit card and smash it down on top of the die. It will get the glue level with the die....let it dry and then twist the credit card off so it doesn't rip the glue off of the processor, clean the die again and then put some thermal paste on and put the heatsink on.

IDK. Who knows.

[bosnia_9]

QUOTE(HackerSupreme @ Aug 1 2008, 01:37 PM)

What about hot glue? Put a little dollop on each corner. Hot glue is kinda easy to mold, even while dry, so the heatsink might be able to smash down on teh glue.

No wait. Clean off the die, then put some plops of hot glue on all sides, THEN, put a credit card and smash it down on top of the die. It will get the glue level with the die....let it dry and then twist the credit card off so it doesn't rip the glue off of the processor, clean the die again and then put some thermal paste on and put the heatsink on.

IDK. Who knows.

if you use glue.. once it gets hot it will just start to melt again and become fluid...

[card9]

You could try closed cell foam of some kind sort of like what they used on the old athlon xp cpu's , the small round foam rubber they had at the corners. It compresses and still applies pressure.
Just a thought.

[Wilhelm_I]

QUOTE(card9 @ Aug 1 2008, 07:58 PM)

You could try closed cell foam of some kind sort of like what they used on the old athlon xp cpu's , the small round foam rubber they had at the corners. It compresses and still applies pressure.
Just a thought.

Ye but the problem with the material is that you want even pressure on the whole chip and since the chip die is solid you have to use something that is as solid as possible like the creditcard pieces(only like steel or so would be better)
Otherwise the outer solder balls will get less pressure and your risk that these get loose because the overall pressure is uneven again

[card9]

The problem I see using your method is you run the risk of holding the heatsink off the die if the material you use is slightly thicker than the die height and doesn't compress at all. At the other end of the spectrum if it applies to much pressure to the substrate you can crush the solder balls causing shorts. I like the idea of even pressure on the entire package, though it would be interesting to know what the spec is for the heatsink clamping pressure for these BGA's are.
Hope it works out for you.

[Wilhelm_I]

QUOTE(card9 @ Aug 1 2008, 08:48 PM)

The problem I see using your method is you run the risk of holding the heatsink off the die if the material you use is slightly thicker than the die height and doesn't compress at all. At the other end of the spectrum if it applies to much pressure to the substrate you can crush the solder balls causing shorts. I like the idea of even pressure on the entire package, though it would be interesting to know what the spec is for the heatsink clamping pressure for these BGA's are.
Hope it works out for you.

Ye thats why you have to use credit card pieces they have got the perfect height, they are just slightly lower that the die so it has good contact with the heatsink...
The thing about the pressure is right, thats the reason why you are only supposed to tighten it as much as necessary like computer tight otherwise the board will flex and it would be too much pressure for the solder balls as well.
You can still tighten them if it is not enough

[HackerSupreme]

I still see that the credit card pieces aren't going to get enough pressure, or hold the heatsink off of the die. I think that something like foam would be the best bet...idk.

[cylent]

hi.

i assume this is the new tutorial bosnia has been telling me about? if so it looks great.

i have one question to start off with.

in step 7 of the tutorial you said:

QUOTE

   If you also want to cool the RAM under the GPU heatsink apply some thermal compound and install a metal washer on each.

now i assume the metal washer will help transfer the heat from the ram chip to the GPU heatsink .. correct?
i did see the picture you put up and it does have the washers on the ram chips but for some reason this is simply not sinking in my head and its just giving me a headache.
also this will cause about 10% or so more heat for the gpu heatsink.  no?

now for the second part. the small credit card snips .. i laughed when i saw this.. not  bad laught but a laugh like oh my god is this safe to do?

i guess tape is better than glue

overall. wonderful tutorial.

by the way can you make a video and put it on youtube of this?
if not i am thinking of doing one. full credit goes to you of course for this wonderful tutorial!

great job, Wilhelm_I



This post has been edited by cylent: Aug 1 2008, 09:20 PM

[M2X]

Nice tutorial man.  
I've been using RBJTech's MKI method for some time now and it's been working flawlessly.
Your method is a great improvement over the previous methods.  
As you may already know MKI prevents flexing (because it uses a washer+deep nut under the board).
It's been for sometime that guys here give me their boxes to do the x-clamp replacement for them and they pay me for my service. I would like the job done in the very best way. That's the reason I go for the difficault and time consuming MKI method. Some of these boxes were already repaired with Lawdawg's method but RRoDed again after about a month.
About a month ago I did my first fix (for my own box) and it's been working great with no single issue.

So that's the reason I want to use a hybrid of yours and RBJTech's method.
This even pressure on the chip is a nice idea. I bet it reduces the time I spend for playing with the tension of the screws.
So here I've got some questions:
1) How thick is the credit/phone card? You don't wanna know how thick they are in my country!  
2) That taping thing really bugs me. Cause it gets dirty and dusty over time and if some day someone wants to redo the job it would be difficault removing those tapes. Is there any other thing we could do?
3) How long have the boxes you fixed with this method worked for you?
4) What if I use a shim? Cause some boxes are just retard    and they really need a shim to work. How should I apply even pressure on the chip?
5) Why using 2mm x 2mm pieces of the card? Why not using a 2mm x length/width of the chip so that the whole sides of the chip gets even pressure? This way a single drop of the glue would suffice and they sit in their places with the heatsink on top of them.
Was there a specific reason that you used small pieces?  
6) Any results for combining this method with RBJTech's rather than Lawdawg's? Just curious...  
That's it for now.
Again thanks for doing the community a service and finding new fixes.
Cheers!  

[card9]

Quote
"Ye thats why you have to use credit card pieces they have got the perfect height, they are just slightly lower that the die so it has good contact with the heatsink..."

This statement seems to be contradictory, if the credit card pieces are lower than the dies how are they applying pressure? It would imply your warping the BGA to cause them to move up into contact with the heatsink.  Maybe I'm not reading this right.