Exploring The 360's Crashing and Heat

GameDailyBiz has a piece up looking into the crashing and overheating problems that have plagued the Xbox 360 since the system launched. A new crashing problem seems to be associated with the most recent update to the Xbox Live software, while german forum-goers think they may have identified the overheating issue. From the article: "The way it's installed now by MS the GPU chip makes contact with the protection foil instead of the heat transfer pad. This can of course cause cooling issues for the graphics chip as for optimal cooling performance there should just be a thin layer of thermal pad between the GPU chip and heatsink."

Comments

Re:Sad day indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

> Low as in they sell every single unit they get on the shelves?

Wow, 360 owners are still trying to get people to believe that BS???

That is so sad...

Of course you don't mean in Japan where they don't look like they will ever sell their initial shipment.

Europe looks to be doing quite bad with multiple people in one console forum a couple days ago offering to upload pictures of large numbers of 360s sitting unsold in stores over there when someone tried to claim the 360 was sold out over there.

And the US, 360s have been in stock in every major retailer for at least a month now. For every person trying to claim they can't find one anywhere in the US another person posts how they walked right in to such and such major retailer and picked up one of multiple 360s sitting there in stock with no bundle required.

'Sold out' does not mean I call EB every day and they have none...

new user notes

[morcheeba]

I just got my xbox360 sunday, and I've had no heat problems, but there are tons of problems with the UI. Oh, where do I start?

• Downloads are fux0red. You can only download one at a time, and while that's happening you can't do anything else. There is no time display, only a percentage display. Not only is the percentage display grossly wrong, if you don't touch the box (because you can't do anything else), the screensaver kicks in and shows you the menu underneath -- totally useless. Downloads instantly start at 5% done. Abort and restart it, and it'll automatically be 50% done. Abort and restart it again and it'll be 100% done and quit downloading.
  
• Once you get a download, the default action is to re-download it. Which, if you accept this, it'll delete (without warning) and start again. The default action should be "go to my download". No, actually, the default action should be "play my download", but they don't have that -- you have to go through 2 more menus to actually play it.
  
• The box constantly logs me in and out - some things need me in, some out.
  
• Menu items are inconsistent. Even on the same menu, some items are highlighted by brightening the center, others are highlighted by brightening the edges.
  
• When you quit a game, the OS doesn't know if you've saved the game or not. So, it'll always warn you that you are about to lose data, even if you haven't started a game. A little communication between the OS and games, please!
  
• The unit is really loud. Much louder than my PC or my microwave.
  
• The only auto-power off option is "never" or "6 hours". I'd like it to power off after downloading my games -- I hope 6 hours is enough -- and preferably ASAP because the fans are really loud.
  
• There is no headphones jack. I use it with my monitor, which supports HDTV but not audio.
  
• There are some things you do that apparently require it to reboot (it doesn't tell you), which autostarts the game. Frustrating if you say "do xxx" and it starts the game instead of going to the menu you were previously at.

The controller is genius. It feels solid and comfortable, the radio works well.
Graphics have been a letdown compared to my PC.
The software is amazingly half-baked considering they've had 4 months after the release date to fix it.

Re:new user notes

[cgenman]

Limiting downloads is actually a feature, sort of. The X360 isn't a PC. Games expect to get complete hardware performance every time they run (technically 5% or so of one of the cores is devoted to the GUI, but you understand what I mean).

Yes, but you should at least be able to navigate the dashboard, start other downloads, chat with friends, etc. Downloading itself isn't a particularly processor intensive task, and it shouldn't be too difficult for the system to put up a "download in progress... game is paused" message for anyone who tries to enter or resume a game.

I expect we'll see this improve as MS releases more dashboard updates.

The box constantly logs me in and out - some things need me in, some out.
Like your problem with unexpected reboots, this sounds like an issue with software updates for a new system. I'm not sure I consider it a problem myself, but you won't really have to worry about it now.

This rather bothers me as well. I'd much rather be logged in or not depending upon how I feel, rather than what the internal state of the box wants.

When you quit a game, the OS doesn't know if you've saved the game or not... A little communication between the OS and games, please!
This is more of an issue with shoddy games that don't autosave, generally lazy multiplatform releases.

Lots of games on the PS2 autosave, just as lots of Xbox games didn't. There seems to be a lot of developers around who haven't quite understood that it isn't save and autosave anymore, it is save and manual save.

DOA can get away with autosaving without warnings because there really isn't any moment-to-moment progress to be lost. However, in an RPG every resource you consume or action you take could count as progress, and as such unless you're going to hit the memory card every second or two, you need to warn the player.

This is really only a problem for the X360 because that's the only console that has the concept of "quitting" a game. You don't quit anything on the PS2, you just turn the machine off.

And really, that summarizes all of the growing pains the X360 is experiencing. It took a very simple thing, a console, and expanded it out in new directions. Some of those are painful and confusing. Some aren't.

Re:new user notes

[DeadScreenSky]

Yes, but you should at least be able to navigate the dashboard, start other downloads, chat with friends, etc. Downloading itself isn't a particularly processor intensive task, and it shouldn't be too difficult for the system to put up a "download in progress... game is paused" message for anyone who tries to enter or resume a game.

I expect we'll see this improve as MS releases more dashboard updates.

I didn't think about chatting with friends. That's a good point. I guess I just only download demos when I'm not using the console, so it's never seemed like a big deal to me.

This rather bothers me as well. I'd much rather be logged in or not depending upon how I feel, rather than what the internal state of the box wants.

You can log out anytime you want (or just make yourself look like you're logged out). The only reason the system forces you to log out is when it is a necessity (generally for software updates).

Lots of games on the PS2 autosave, just as lots of Xbox games didn't. There seems to be a lot of developers around who haven't quite understood that it isn't save and autosave anymore, it is save and manual save.

DOA can get away with autosaving without warnings because there really isn't any moment-to-moment progress to be lost. However, in an RPG every resource you consume or action you take could count as progress, and as such unless you're going to hit the memory card every second or two, you need to warn the player.

This is really only a problem for the X360 because that's the only console that has the concept of "quitting" a game. You don't quit anything on the PS2, you just turn the machine off.

I didn't mean to imply that only the Xbox1 did autosaves, though it was pretty rare on the PS2 and Gamecube. It definitely is a developer education issue.

Autosaves in an RPG are more of a gameplay design issue than anything. Of course since the X360 doesn't have any yet that can't be what the grandparent post was complaining about. But it's pretty ridiculous that games like Burnout Revenge and Amped 3 pop up big "now saving" messages that stop the game in its tracks every time you accomplish anything. DOA4 saves in the background after every battle and it doesn't slow the game down at all. That's clearly not a console issue, it's a developer issue.

And really, that summarizes all of the growing pains the X360 is experiencing. It took a very simple thing, a console, and expanded it out in new directions. Some of those are painful and confusing. Some aren't.

Well put.

Re:Wow...its kind of hard to believe.

[ivan256]

any moron thats ever built a computer at all knows that modern CPU's and GPU's need big fat heatsinks...with thermal compound in between.

It's a good thing you used 'moron' in there. Plenty of modern GPUs work just fine with rather small heatsinks. Practically no video card manufacturers use compound on their chips.

You seem to have bought into the 'performance cooling' crap that has sprung out of the overclocking craze in the late '90s. There are plenty of transfer materials that work as well or better than thermal compounds. Even though the conventional wisdom amongst hobbiests is that compound is the best, especially the expensive ones... In reality there are a variety of thermal pads that work better, but in a more permanent way. Usually they melt on first use to flow into surfaces, or they glue themselves to the chip and the heatsink.

The foil probably works fine until after the first time you remove it.

Re:User Headspace Error

[rafemonkey]

I agree that all of the next gen consoles are computers and really need to be treated as such. But the problem is that they are being marketed as game consoles, and every game console back to dawn of time (or the late 1970s) has been a peice of AV hardware. Companies go out of their way to market them as such, to avoid losing potential consumers who have no interest in computers, or even find them scary. That the next gen consoles really are computers doesn't change the way consumers percive them. This can be interperated in two ways, consumers are dumb, or somebody doesn't understand their target market. Imagine the following scenario...

Customer: This Microsoft car 360 keeps crashing.
Support: How are you using it?
Customer: Well, I was just driving down the road...
Support: AHA! That's the problem. Car 360 is a perfomance machine, you sould only opperate it on closed racetracks.

Re:User Headspace Error

[some guy on slashdot]

You're getting warmer, but you still aren't quite on the money yet. A video game console isn't a piece of AV equipment; it's a toy. As such, it should be able to deal with running on top of a pile of clothes in a kid's room, on the floor, on a stack of pizza boxes, stacked on top of other gaming hardware, pretty much anywhere. It also needs to be able to withstand being kicked, having the wires pull out suddenly, being gnawed on by pets, etc. No matter how much shiny plastic we may cover it in, we cannot hide the fact that play is messy.

Dare I go so far as to point out that Nintendo is the only major player in the console market that has experience making toys?