Water Cooling an Xbox 360

An anonymous reader writes "HardOCP has done it once again. They have an article running down the process of water cooling an Xbox 360, and with surprising effectiveness and remarkable styling." From the article: "We had plans to water cool an Xbox 360 for over a year now. Little did we know that not only will this water cooling project be more fun than the original, but it may even be practical. Imagine that. With reports of heat related issues and a heat sink that can get almost too hot to touch after marathon gaming sessions, the Xbox 360 water cooling project now had a sense of purpose. We bought a retail Xbox 360 specifically for this project. The minute we got it back to the [H] labs we tore into it and, with a little help from the fine folks at Koolance, we have put together a water cooling solution that will handle anything the Xbox 360 can throw at it and literally knock your socks off." Actual implimentation with hand-holding. Hexus.net was discussing a kit to do this a few days ago.

Comments

Some other crazy ideas

[jaygatsby27]

How about a small fan or maybe, just maybe, not shoving the whole thing into a tiny space with no ventilation.

Cooling

[rfinnvik]

The standard 360 cooler uses liquid to transfer heat more efficiently from the CPU/GPU afaik. Maybe in the next revision they should consider taking this idea further and add a radiator and pump... :)

Re:Cooling

[Admiral Frosty]

I can only imagine what might go wrong with Microsoft putting water-cooling in a major console. They failed a simple power brick...

Re:Cooling

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

They failed a simple power brick...

Typical Slashdot piss-on-Microsoft attitude. Microsoft likely had no part in designing the power brick; for one, they don't have the expertise to design an active-PFC swtiched-mode high-wattage power supply.

Now, we can certainly fault Microsoft for not testing their vendor's product sufficently, but the fact is that 95% of XBOX 360s are chugging along perfectly fine.

Re:Cooling

[rseuhs]

Typical Slashdot piss-on-Microsoft attitude. Microsoft likely had no part in designing the power brick;

Typical Microsoft-fanboyism.

The moment Microsoft puts any component into a box that has the label "Microsoft" on it, they are responsible.

Yeah, I know, for the typical "it's not Microsoft's fault" - apologist, reponsibility is a strange and alien concept.

But essentially it comes down to this:

It doesn't matter wether Microsoft had a part in designing the power brick.

They are responsible to make sure the thing works. Yes, that means if some supplier screwed up it's still Microsoft's repsonsibility to do some minimal quality control so that the broken units don't get shipped.

Today XBox cooling, tomorrow, WMD

[tjstork]

You know, I have a grim admiration of anyone that would devote so much time to water cooling an x-box. I only hope that the people with such time and talent do not devote their energies to darker activities. Today, those guys are cooling x-box 360s, but tomorrow, they'll be working on nuclear weapons, writing spyware, or working on Windows, depending on which pays the most.

sigh....

[Quick Sick Nick]

Why do modders always go compete ape shit over stupid stuff like this? I have an Xbox 360 and it works. It just works. No it doesn't have water cooling. I also did case mod it, and it still works! Yes, some people have had problems. Just don't put the power supply in a bad place and you'll be fine. Water cooling for PC's may make sense because there are different types of PC's. Right now an Xbox 360 is just a 360, and if you follow instructions and have a bit of common sense, you'll be fine. It either plays the game or it doesn't. A water cooling system isn't just unecessary, it's stupid.

Re:sigh....

[JonN]

Next time please RTFA and you will see that the guys over at HardOCP agree. Here you go, since you seem too lazy to learn about what you are commenting on:

"Four years ago next month we built the world's first water cooled Xbox. At the time, a lot of people asked us why we would want to water cool an Xbox, mostly because they didn't understand the motivation behind it. The fact of the matter was that the standard heat sink on the 700MHz Intel processor would barely get hot under normal use and surely didn't warrant the performance offered by a custom water cooling kit. At the time, we did it simply because no one else had done it and "because we could." That was our motivation then and that is partially our motivation now.

We had plans to water cool an Xbox 360 for over a year now. Little did we know that not only will this water cooling project be more fun than the original, but it may even be practical. Imagine that. With reports of heat related issues and a heat sink that can get almost too hot to touch after marathon gaming sessions, the Xbox 360 water cooling project now had a sense of purpose. We bought a retail Xbox 360 specifically for this project. The minute we got it back to the [H] labs we tore into it and, with a little help from the fine folks at Koolance, we have put together a water cooling solution that will handle anything the Xbox 360 can throw at it and literally knock your socks off."

Re:sigh....

[pavera]

"it just works"
then you go on to qualify your it just works statement by saying you have to put the power supply in a "good" place...
This is a piece of consumer electronics. Do you consider a DVD player to be broken if you have to lay the cables in just the right way?
What about a TV? Heck even a computer, switch, or router? I can't believe you're defending the xbox 360. Having to pay attention to where cables/exhaust fans are located on a piece of consumer electronics is unacceptable.

Re:sigh....

[romeo_in_blk_jeans]

Actually...

Exhaust clearance is something that people who own component audio systems have had in the back of their mind for a couple dozen years now. Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean it's a new phenominon.

If you find yourself worked up into a frothing tizzy over the fact that you can't hide your power supply under your oven while you're baking shit and expect proper operation, you have no right to own a console.

Word.

Re:sigh....

[balthan]

isn't just unecessary, it's stupid.

Welcome to slashdot, you must be new here.

40 lashes with a dictionary

[Dun Malg]

we have put together a water cooling solution that will handle anything the Xbox 360 can throw at it and literally knock your socks off.

I fail to see how a water cooling system would do any sock-knocking. I guess they don't actually know what the word literally means (hint: it isn't a superlative nor does it simply add emphasis).

Re:40 lashes with a dictionary

[thesandtiger]

Perhaps there is an upcoming adaptor for the 360 that gives it very powerful cybernetic arms that can throw things at the water cooling system hard enough to send shockwaves rippling through space and time, waves that will go back through history to the point where you were about to put on your socks and slap you upside your head, making you say "Huh? What was that?" and thus distracting you from your sock donning, thus not only essentially knocking your socks off, but erasing from all existence any memory that you had, at one time, even had them on.

But noooo, you couldn't give them the benefit of the doubt - you have to assume that, rather than making hardware so powerful it can alter history, they just don't know what the word means. Such negativity!

Re:40 lashes with a dictionary

[Dun Malg]

Begone you prescriptionist! and your prescriptionist dictionary too!

Prescriptionist? WTF are you talking about? When you preface a figure of speech with "literally", what you're saying is "(figure of speech) occurred, and I don't mean that as a figure of speech". Nobody's fucking socks got knocked off, so "literally" is the wrong fucking word.

...using "they" with a singular antecedent

They: the writer, editor, webmaster, etc.; essentially the collective group of people who had the opportunity-- nay, the responsibility of proofreading the material. But they are clearly not entirely literate.

Re:40 lashes with a dictionary

[Dun Malg]

In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for a language.

If what you're doing doesn't qualify as such, then I don't know what does.

I'm not saying that usage of the word "literally" is wrong because the dictionary says it is. I'm saying it's wrong because it's opposite of the common usage. Point is, the entire value of language is its commonality. Traditional prescriptivism is railing against uses of "ain't" not in place of "am not", or the splitting of infinitives. "Incorrect" usages like that do not cause ambiguity, they're simply nitpicks by absolutists.

Using the word "literally" to add emphasis is common usage,

Hogwash. It's a common error, but common usage is still primarily the correct way.

and given that you understood clearly the intent of the author, it seems that it was an adequate choice of words.

Just because an error is common doesn't make it not an error. My recognition of the error doesn't make it not an error. There is a descriptive definition of the word as we, the english speaking public, use it, and it isn't for emphasis. See, "descriptivists" can be as bad as prescriptivists when they defend every illiterate dumbfuck's utter misuse of a word. "Literally knock your socks off" is an easy one to spot as wrong because there does not exist anything that literally knocks off socks. But what if they said "literally burning down the house", intending it as emphasis? Pretty fucking ambiguous. It's fucking wrong because "literally" has a specific common usage that doesn't just vanish because some crackhead with a web site doesn't know how the rest of us use it.

And if I'm not mistaken, we use the American punctuation rules on slashdot, so put those commas back behind those quotation marks.

I use "programming" punctuation rules, i.e. if the fragment quoted didn't have punctuation originally, then the period at the end of my sentence has no business weaseling its way into that character string as it's part of MY words, not THEIRS. It doesn't matter, though. The important thing is that no meaning is lost.

I probably haven't convinced you, but at least I hope you see that prescription is ultimately a waste of time.

Oh, indeed I accept that trying to stem the tide of illiteracy is pointless.
I just don't agree that I'm being prescriptive.

Bad Design

[Anonymous Coward]

A game console that benefits from being water cooled, have its power supply dangled from a string, and can't even be slightly moved while there is a disk inside smacks of terrible industrial design. This is not a console, it's an unweildy, ill-conceived, ill-executed beast that seems to actually hate its users.

People say Apple users blindly ignore any and all flaws with Apple products, but Apple users have nothing on XBox fanboys. The thing could spew out radioactive mist and they'd still be forgiving Microsoft because OMG teh grafix are teh r0xx0rz!!!!11

*Literally* Knock My Socks Off, eh?

[venomkid]

With what, water pressure?

*grumblegrumble*

Aww...

[Psykus]

"With reports of heat related issues and a heat sink that can get almost too hot to touch after marathon gaming sessions.."

I just love touching the heatsink after a good session of gaming, and now I can't with the Xbox 360; I gotta get this product now!

Re:Aww...

[HoboMaster]

Unless you're using their definition of "literally," in which case it would mean it's kind of hot.

Cooling the wrong components?

[Hunter-Killer]

It's the PSU that overheats, causing the majority of recent problems.

But hey, if you'd rather spend ~180 on a water cooling system instead of not stuffing the power block deep inside a cabinet, more power to you. ;)

Koolance Commercial

[eander315]

They used all Koolance products throughout, with no discussion at all about why they used those particular parts when several other better ones are available. This really doesn't seem that useful anyway unless you pipe the water through the power supply. Even the most intrepid of the PC water cooling community are wary of doing that.

HardOCP knocks my socks off, literally

[Legendre]

Wow, the authors command of english literally knocks my socks off!!

Even the geeks are lawyers now

[geekwithsoul]

From the site:

" (Warning! Any mod that requires removing the cover of your new $400 game console voids your warranty. Period. The use of tools such as pliers, screwdrivers, and power drills within close proximity of the internal components of your Xbox 360 can result in user error that could ultimately render you console inoperative. It goes without saying that [H]ardOCP assumes no responsibility for any damage that may occur to you or your Xbox 360 if you attempt this mod on your own. Having said that, all the cool kids are doing it.)

If "it goes without saying," why say it at all?

You've obviously never had an Xbox360 fall on you.

[TubeSteak]

I had one fall on my leg.

It ripped my flesh to the bone, knocked my sock off, broke my big toe and killed my cat.

damn you Microsoft
DAMN YOU

Re:I don't get it...

[Varkias]

Well I look at it like they did this for a few reasons.
1) For people who already bought an XBox 360 and cannot wait for MS to "fix the problem"
2) It's a cool thing to do.
3) Third parties can see that watercooling an XBox 360 is possible and will release kits that people can use.

But yes in a perfect world MS should fix the problem, it's not 100% guaranteed that they will though. Power to the people.

SWEET

[Mad Ogre]

I'm now inspired to water cool my GAME BOY ADVANCED! Next will be my Texas Instuments Calculator and Timex Expedition digital watch! Water Cooling makes everything better.

Um...actually...

[AmazingRuss]

...the damn thing rocks. No problems, stunning graphics...and its a pretty bitchen mp3 player if you plug a USB hard drive plugged into it, which kind of makes up for them trying to lock you into windows boxen by not supporting smb, in favor of some doubtless cheesy and unreliable streaming server software on your XP computer.

Sure it gets hot...its a goddam supercomputer in a breadbox.

It will eat disks if you wobble it while its on, but with the rotational velocity of that disk at howevermany rpms its spinning, thats not surprising. I find very little need to wobble it while its on, so this is not a problem for me.

I run linux, and agree that Microsoft is the devil, but at 720p on my old projector, the 360 games are so beautiful that it brings just a tear to my eye.

Oh, and I got mine off ebay, for $625, with shipping. Just because I wanted it, now, and didn't feel like waiting in line. I'd have paid it at the store if there were no lines...it really is worth it to me...but I have a lot of disposable income for such foolishness, so I suppose I'm atypical.

Meanwhile, YOU, Mr. Anonymous economically disadvantaged troll, are playing on some newly sucky old system, or dropped 2 grand on a hot gaming pc, which you can't wobble while you have the dvd spinning, either.

Therefore, u R teh SUX0RS. I shall now perform an interperative dance of mockery in your general direction. Woo! Woo! .... Woo! Woo!

Armchair engineering

[SuperBanana]

With reports of heat related issues and a heat sink that can get almost too hot to touch after marathon gaming sessions

If 'almost too hot to touch' is below the specs for the processor's operating temperature range...it doesn't matter how hot it feels to the user.

It never ceases to amaze me how people with no training will second-guess the basic competency of others with degrees in their field. Yes, the power supply gets too hot if placed on a rug...but that doesn't mean the xbox itself isn't designed properly. Probably just means that they didn't do a lot of testing in people's homes with the bricks on rugs and such; from what I understand, the problem is pretty rare even if you don't "cool" the brick.

I also love the egotistical "we drive 'em hard" implied in the "marathon gaming" bits- as if they're HARDCORE users who STRESS the xbox beyond its limits. I guarantee Microsoft had units running benchmarks/game demos for WEEKS at a time doing burn-in...

Re:Armchair engineering

[theLOUDroom]

If 'almost too hot to touch' is below the specs for the processor's operating temperature range...it doesn't matter how hot it feels to the user.

First, I have to mention the obvious. The heatsink is going to be COOLER than the processor itself. (That's the whole reason it works as a heat sink.) If the heatsink is below the maximum temp for the processor it doesn't actually mean you're safe. Without knowing the thermal resistances for everything, you simply cannot say whether you're safe or not. Especially thetaCS, the case to heatsink thermal resistance.

Second, even if you're within specs IT DOES MATTER for reliability reasons.

Even notice how many motherboards die because those big electrolytic caps sitting next to the CPU fail? The failure rate of components is quite signifcantly affected by temperature. For example, an electrolytic capacitor might be rated for 8,000 hrs at 75 C but that increases to 32,000 hours at 55 C. The same is true (but generally to a lesser degree) for virtually all components.

There are also other little niceities like a lower operating temperature meaning a lower leakage current.

It never ceases to amaze me how people with no training will second-guess the basic competency of others with degrees in their field.

It never ceases to amaze me how pompus us people with degrees can be.

I also love the egotistical "we drive 'em hard" implied in the "marathon gaming" bits- as if they're HARDCORE users who STRESS the xbox beyond its limits.

I find this obnoxious too.

I guarantee Microsoft had units running benchmarks/game demos for WEEKS at a time doing burn-in...

Me too, but I certainly DON'T guarantee what the results of that test were. Maybe the results projected that many xboxes would barely outlast their warranty coverage. We don't know. The only thing we can guess is that they were reasonably sure it wouldnt' fail in a manner where it had to be replaced within the warranty period.

On one hand, you would think people could do their job.

On the other hand look at the nice power cords microsoft sent out to 1st gen Xbox owners so their houses don't get burnt down. Could these be those same guys with degrees you're talking about?

People with degrees in their field make mistakes all the time. I'm not saying these guys found one, but acting as if it's crazy to question someone because they may have a degree is out of line.

Re:For the love of...

[Melfina]

As opposed of watching a standard format DVD on your TV by using an xbox/ps2/dvd player without an adapter.

Fanboys for any system, for any sort, have no right to complain about other fanboys.

Does it include...

[Spy der Mann]

watercooling the power supply? :P

sad

[mj2k]

it's sad that after all the hype, MS seemingly ignored such a basic component as verifying that internal components remain within thermal limits. I should be able to leave my xbox 360 on overnight without having to worry about it overheating, and I shouldn't have to resort to water-cooling the 360 to ensure it operates properly. Props to those who got this to work, but a user who spends 300+ bucks on a console shouldn't have to make the choice of voiding their warranty (and spending extra to put a cooling sys together) in order to keeep their 360 operating within thermal specs, or risk overheating and failure in the future. MS never seems to quite get it, they made a _huge_ deal pre-release about the chassis being smaller and more attractive (especially those stupid swappable front covers), yet all the hardcore gamers I know would prefer a stable system with great performance to an attractive POS that overheats when you leave it running overnight.

Re:sad

[DeadScreenSky]

I should be able to leave my xbox 360 on overnight without having to worry about it overheating, and I shouldn't have to resort to water-cooling the 360 to ensure it operates properly.

You can and you don't. Seriously, don't believe everything you read (including this, I guess).

Re:Pre-emptive Dupe Joke?

[Heembo]

Well, the original did not have the detailed and free instructions like the previous, so I think this is a very cool and useful post.

Re:Something interesting:

[kimvette]

. . . and the water cooling your car's internal engine is cooling the intake manifold, then the heads and then the block. Many times the amount of heat that you're dealing with in any PC power supply(according to howstuffworks, a gallon of gasoline contains the equivalent of 60 kilowatt hours worth of energy. If you're burning a gallon of gasoline per hour, you need to dissipate at least 75% of that much energy in waste heat. That's downright scary, considering that expansion/contraction needs to be constrainted to a couple thousandths of an inch for any given moving part!

Why do I mention this? As a comparison - cooling them in series isn't that big of deal when you're talking about a 180W power supply and 3/8" tubing, and ANY type of radiator to actually dissipate the heat. Given restrictions introduced by typical automotive thermostats, the effective flow for coolant in an automotive system won't be much better than the 3/8" tubing used in the XBox cooler for this article (in fact the auto thermostat is designed to restrict water flow, both to increase heat transfer and to help prevent the pump from bursting the radiator at high RPMs).

Silocon chips altogether.

[peterfa]

They way I see it silicon chip technology is hitting a wall. The wall is heat.

Back in the day, chips like these processors today would be dreams. It's amazing how certain dreams never succeed and amazing things never dreamt become reality. The Internet was not dreamt, but it has come. The flying car does not exist in the practically and computer chips are doing nightmarish speeds. The same happens with large cities.

Most cities are not designed to become large. the result is extremely tight roads and impracticalities. The solution is all kinds of crazy technologies. Computer chips are following this path.

The silicon chip is largely inefficient in my opinion since it produces so much heat. Large cooling devices are needed now. Though a dream it may be, the basic technology that makes computer chips, specifically the CPUs, need to be changed out to more efficient technologies. I hope for optical computers in my day. If done properly, the optics could allow for extreme speeds and cooler temperatures. Optics don't cause cross-talk so wide busses that are really close to eachother could run at ultra-high frequencies (in data transmission, not in color) for near flawless function.

The XBox 360 may be designed with a poor implementation of cooling, but it is not the only device that produces a lot of heat. I don't like Microsoft myself, but I certainly don't blame Microsoft for producing a high heat device. Though they should have added a better cooling device.

Ultimately, we are hitting the wall, and Microsoft is taking some heat (sorry). AMD may produce a cooler chip, but I think a new technology is needed to advance the old fashioned silocon-transistor-metal based chips. Add optical technology (again, a dream) and free ourselves of this burden.

it just works *FOR NOW*

[vlad_petric]

Unmodded, the temperature after a couple of hours of Quake 4 was ~150F. With watter cooling it got to ~100F. Such a dramatic change in temperature can greatly increase the lifetime of the system.

XBOX360 is an awesome gaming platform, but it's pretty clear that the first version is doing poorly power- and cooling-wise.

Re:it just works *FOR NOW*

[CastrTroy]

That's only 65 degress celcius. Which isn't really that hot. I don't think that a chip running at that temp would have any problems in the long run. PC processors run at that temp all the time. It might feel a little hot to the touch, but nothing metal, silicon and other chip materials shouldn't be able to handle.

Liquid cooling should provide less noise

[Cardcaddy]

If you own a Xbox 360 you will quickly realize how loud the two case fans are. The liquid cooling modification if done properly will make a huge difference in the noise level provided you can remove, replace, or slow down the stock fans.

Re:Liquid cooling should provide less noise

[watership]

Best when not played? How well researched your opinion is. The xbox 360 is QUIETER than my quiet case PC. The xbox 360 is also much faster. It's just not as silent as say, the PS2 is.

Re:you are fucking kidding right?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can water cool most appliances. My overclocked microwave can do 3 minute popcorn in 2:52!

Re:Water Cooler VS. Refrigerator w/ holes in the d

[bprime]

This is not an uncommon comment. However, consider that most fridges have to work very hard to keep even lukewarm contents cool. The fridge that you linked to would burn out with a "warm" object inside of it because the thermostat would be running the refridgeration cycle continuously due to the heat given off by the xbox.