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

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: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.