Slashdot Mirror
Fully Internal Water-cooled Xbox 360
NiteStar writes "Dano2k0 created a fully internal water-cooled Xbox 360. Unlike previous water-cooled Xbox 360 mods, this one has everything inside the original Xbox 360 case, including the water reservoir and pump. Both CPU (Zern GPU block) and GPU (Koolance GPU-180-H06 block) are water-cooled, with internal Tank-o-Matic mini reservoir, 12v thermaltake pump and DD fill port on the plexi window. The case itself is also customized with a plexiglass grill and LEDs, and it's fully custom painted. The case mod will also be featured in the next edition of the Official Xbox Magazine UK."
Why?
Aside from running a bit cooler, does it actually affect performance in any way? And I'm assuming the power brick still gets nice and toasty, too. I can't check for myself cos of wonderful wonderful Websense.
This guy's the limit!
Shouldn't someone be cooling the power supply? That's the real problem.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
It's there, it's possible, and he wanted to show that he got the bigger balls.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Is this what you do when you play WAY too much Need For Speed Underground? I think I saw something like this on MTV's Pimp my Console.
[blockquote]The case mod will also be featured in the next edition of the Official Xbox Magazine UK."[/blockquote]So the "official" mag is going to advise its readers on a fancy way to scuttle their warranties?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
But I'm pretty sure that he has the superior water cooling to ANY terrorist!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A lot of people are asking why or pointing out that the power supply is what really needs cooling. I feel I should point something out.
The whole point of consoles is that you shouldn't need to do bullshit like this. Clearly someone at Microsoft severely fucked up if people are finding it necessary to modify their XBox 360's just so they don't overheat. Once you start having to do all of that all you have is a cheap computer (not ever that cheap) that can't do all the other computer type things.
Failures to understand things like this will ensure that Microsoft never turns a profit in their gaming hardware division and why Nintendo will keep going. Nintendo provides me with an appliance that just works for what it was designed for.
This is of course not to say that doing stuff to consoles isn't fun or worthwhile. I thought the XBox to PC mods were a real hoot, but before this generation, no one has felt the need to mod just to make their hardware work properly (ancient consoles excluded).
Help I'm a rock.
It's a little weird to me that the hardware mods that seem to get the most attention are basically plumbing.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I'm wondering why noone has thought to use alcohol to cool instead of water, or even mineral oil.
There are safer things than water to use.
(Wait, alcohol is combustable. Oops. Oh well, he didn't want his house anyway...)
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Cool it to 4.5 Kelvins and crank out those cycles! :)
I'm so tired of all the wannabes who case mod their PC with a hundred extra fans and a bling bling paint job and post about all their computer expertise and how much they could overclock it.
It's just boring, and it's not computer science. A 5% overclock is pretty much insignifigant. Wake me up when somebody comes up with some cool new algortithm that improves a process by at least an order of magnitude - thats where the real performance gains come in.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Yet, Microsoft/WinTel still hold the lion's share of the market. I don't think anyone really cares if it Just Works, only 1) if their buddies think it's cool, and 2) if everyone else has one. It's all marketing and 0 substance.
Sony ha
Wouldn't this technically be illegal in terms of the 'license' you have to use the hardware?
Remember ye olde 'mod chips' that MS went after tooth n nail?
It just strikes me as a wee bit hypocritical to then feature such a blatant violation of the license in an 'official' MS magazine.
Now, I understand that this actual 'change' doesn't affect how the Xbox actually works. But I'd also bet that the license doesn't differentiate between mod'ing a chip and ripping out the innards to display them in your own custom case either. As such, has MS just undermined the legal 'heft' of their license since they allow *some* mods and not others?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Wouldn't distilled water be best? It doesn't conduct electricity as well as "dirtier" water and it's not flammable.
Developers: We can use your help.
I ask myself that all the time. Why not use alcohol instead of water. Water sucks, yeah for alco...[passes out]
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
What ever happened to real hardware hacking? A guy buys some prefab shiny bits for his XBox, big deal... I think I did the same thing with my trapper keeper in '88.
anything to distract owners from the fact that they supported a convicted monopoly by buying it I guess.
For any slashdot links a quick and easy way around the "Websense" is to just use Mirrordot. It is not blocked by Websense and lets you view the articles that are linked to from /.
It works for me... Hope it helps you too...
Sorry for being offtopic Mods..
--Valthan
...but instead of watercooling a 360, I watercooled an Atari VCS. Much quieter now.
Everything inside the case? Boring! My 360 water cooling system is inside AND outside the case. And it keeps the fishies warm
I don't get why everyone is saying this is 'teh shit'. Sure, it may not be the most productive use of his time but he just wanted to 'improve' his Xbox 360. He probably did some of it for fun. Seems to be a better use of your time than slagging off someone on slashdot...
Also, plenty of people mod their computers and put in extra cooling. Does that mean that they (or whoever put together/made their pc) did a shit job of putting together a pc?
If I were Microsoft I'd be plain embarrassed that my flagship design for the mouth-breathing console masses was so poorly engineered that cooling the fucker has become a cottage industry.
I think the market is ready for an entrant that "just lets me play my fucking game". I doubt it will be Sony, however.
(Yeah, I quit consoles when they switched away from cartridges years ago because I couldn't stand the CD load times. And before you ask, yes I use a DVD player that lets me skip past the warnings, preview nonsense, etc.)
Wow such vitriolic posts in response to what I thought was a kind of cool Xbox mod. Sure it's not necessary and sure there is room for debate one way or the other regarding the quality (or lack there of) of the Xbox hardware. But damn people all this was is some guy moding his Xbox, it wasn't a fucking constitutional amendment stating you MUST BUY AN XBOX OR BE THROWN IN THE NEAREST GHULAG. FFS people get a god damn grip on yourselves, lighten up, get laid, have a drink, or what ever you need to do in order to get your collective panties un-bunched. You're acting like it's the end of the world instead of a /. article.
~shakes my head~ No wonder the general populace thinks geeks are all a bunch of self righteous assholes. It's over reactions to things like this that give them that impression.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The only reason this might be interesting would be to make the system quieter so people with slow net connections could download demos overnight with the new Queue feature. The overheating problem was the power supply and it was only a specific run of power supplies that would overhead when people wedged them behind their entertainment centers on carpet or sat TVs on them. There will always be a group of people that void their warranties on principle.
Man invents a windscreen wiper that moves water from one part of the screen and squirts it back on somewhere else.
I am waiting for a liquid sodium cooling Xbox 360 mod. If it works for nuclear reactors it shoudl be able to work on a Xbox.
Because now it also functions as a humidifier! ;)
Figured that with no decent games for the Xbox360, people need to find SOMETHING fun to do with them.
--
--
'Yes, I know this is a troll, but its a Microsoft product, give me a break!"
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Its that DVD that drives me crazy. I somtimes stop playing oblivion becuase its wine is so incessant.
I'm sorry to burst your fairytale fantasy, but any other console has been a small computer in disguise too. Your beloved Nintendo or Sony or whatever don't run on magic and pixie dust either, but, guess what? Use a CPU, a graphics card, RAM, etc.
E.g., the Dreamcast had the same graphics chip that was available in PC graphics cards too, a modem that you could have bought on the PC too, off the shelf SDRAM, and generally guess what? It was just a fucking computer in an ugly white box. It even took peripherals like keyboard and/or mouse, or you could buy an ISDN or Ethernet adapter for it. All that it had different was a non-Intel CPU, that's all.
And if the people are willing to pay that, the problem is...? No, seriously. Since when was it a duty to provide everything for free? If they can put a price on something and the market actually pays it, then that's just capitalism in action.
Oh yes, I'm sure that _you_ could single handedly emulate every single game in existance, on a different CPU and a different graphics chip and all. Emulation isn't a trivial affair buddy, and it becomes increasingly problematic because of ever increasing complexity of the system you're trying to emulate. Yes, I'm sure everyone can wave Zsnes as proof that a console can be emulated, but look further up the food chain. It took several teams about 6 years to emulate a PSX acceptably. (But any existing emu still doesn't emulate at least a quarter of the PSX titles well enough!) It took more than 6 years of trying to emulate the PS2, and _still_ noone has more than a few demos and games that make it barely past the start menu, to show for that effort.
So basically, you know, if you're going to proclaim people as idiots for not being able to emulate the XBox, how about proving that you're not exactly as big an idiot? Surely you can get at least the CPU emulated perfectly in real time and at the correct speed on a dual-G5? I mean, come on, you can find the specs for both CPUs online, there's no major secret involved.
The crashes and patches were brought by the companies who coded those games, not by MS. MS's only (debatable) fault was providing a HDD and an online connection, that made patches possible. But blaming every crash or patch on that MS decision is like blaming Boeing for the 9/11. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? If Company A thought it's perfectly ok to shaft its customers with a buggy untested game, surely only Company A is to blame? I fail to see how those providing just the connection or the medium are to blame there.
The 360 hardware is a fucking disaster even if you completely ignore the massive defect rate. It is essentially a 480p system trying to run games at 720p and ending up with jaggy and low frame rate messes.
Sad to burst your bubble, but noone is duty-bound to give you your dream gaming rig for a quarter of the price. Console games have always had to deal with lower specs. Consoles never were some $2000 gaming rig subsidized down to $300 whatever. The question is whether a game can look good enough on that hardware, not what specs you'd consider enough for a "true" 720p machine.
And from what I can tell, a helluva lot of people are actually satisfied with their frame rates in 360 games.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's not a bug, it's a feature...
I find it relatively funny that so many people are complaining about the 360 being a 'ticking time-bomb', and that people continue to claim that Microsoft is 'digging their grave' with the faulty hardware. I, beg to differ. While there have been a lot of issues with the console release, there were just as many at PS2 release and no one seems to equate these two situations because Microsoft is some 'horrible evil'. I own a 360 launch console and I have yet to have any issues whatsoever, and I'm not in the minority, either. There are a lot of incidents you hear about where people's 360s are on the fritz and you don't hear about those who are working... And for good reason. Why would someone complain or post on a message board that their XBox 360 is working just fine? You've fallen into the trap of believing only what you see because there is no real need to report on the other side of it. It is just like when something awry goes on in any aspect of the world - you only hear the negative because there is little incentive to report on the positive.
All of my friends and peers that own first generation 360 consoles still have them intact and working with little to no problems whatsoever. I know you hate Microsoft, but making unsubstantiated claims and implying that all consoles are faulty is preposterous. Don't pull the 360 from the market until it is officially broken. There may be issues right now with some consoles, but they're not as widespread as it would appear.
Maybe the reason why the X-Box 360 gets too hot is because Microsoft didn't design it themselves, rather, they outsourced the development to India.
And just how is it a timebomb pray-tell?
Google around for people that have gone thru plenty of PS2s, plenty of Apple POwerbooks, or MacBooks.
I'd love to hear how you can explain how it is poorly designed...
Definitely good with the mod(s)... possibly not as good with a camera?
I am more concerned if the presence of the cabling and radiator would obstruct airflow over other components that are not fitted with waterblock.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Now THAT'S was an extreme mod.
Stupid.
I won't spend too much time explaining to you why this is a crap proposition.
MS's hardware is not flawless, but it is far from flawed enough to pull it from the market, not at all. Too much to lose for both gamers/MS alike if that were to happen. B/c how efficient do you think PS3 will be when that comes out? Oh I promise you, not that good. It's what to expect from this kind of technological leap, and if whiners such as yourself cannot accept it, do not purchase it and quit complaining.
Good day.
My Xbox 360 works just fine. :)
Run ssh tunnel from your desktop to your home computer (I assume you don't have websense at home:8), run proxy on your home computer and make sure proxy listens on localhost only, configure proxy on your desktop computer to go over the tunnel to your home computer's proxy. Enjoy! :)
And unless you want it quieter, there's no point. The problem with the Xbox 360 is merely that if you put it in an enclosed space, it just makes too much heat. It's not that it can't exhaust the heat. Well, since this produces the same amount of heat (slightly more) in the same space, it'll have exactly the same problem.
So unless you just want to make your 360 quieter, skip this. And the real noise in the 360 comes from the DVD drive anyway.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I agree 100%. My lauch console has never crashed or frozen once. None of any my friends have experienced a problem either. I am willing to be that half of the complainers don't even own a 360 console. It's getting ridiculous.
Repant. Thy end is sheer.
ModChips are illegal because they are promoted as being useful for circumventing copyright (i.e. "Buy this ModChip and play burned games!").
You are presuming that burned games are equivalent to pirated games which is not necessarily the case. If I decide to burn a backup copy of a game I own (or license), that is covered under fair use.
Hey, I can replace my water heater with this! Too bad the marketing folks at Microsoft didn't pick up on this one. They should have jumped on this.
More fool them. If the hardware sucks, why keep going back for more of it? Understandable I guess if you're covered by a warranty - up to a point, but not really understandable outside the warranty unless you own a massive library of titles.
As for MacBooks, I'm surprised to hear people going through plenty of them as they're only just out.
switcher \'swi`ch &r\, n.
A person who thinks that they are a Mac user but are really just trying to be. The mistake they make is to try to become a Mac user, when real Mac users are all about not trying to be anything and following your own rules. There is no fashion code to being a Mac user. There are no rules as to what applications you have to run.
Recent converts like you are ruining the old school Mac community because you are posers. Apple releases one OS that popularizes Fitts' law and the Genie effect, and suddenly people assume being a Mac user is all about owning a Mac. But a real Mac user is born, not made. You "switchers" are misrepresenting yourselves and the Mac platform. You're giving people the wrong idea of what Macintosh is.
switcher: shops at hot topic, thinks Firefox is a good Mac app, waiting for OS X port of PayrollPro 2000, follows any hint of a fashion trend (instead of setting them!), wouldn't know Clarus from Carl Sagan.
real Mac user: someone true to who they are, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world.
Given the discontent that is flying around the PS3 camp at the minute I can only see the 360 getting more and more reverent in its status. Its not at the level to beat the Wiiiiiiiiiii love out there at the minute...but hell...its fast catching up and could over take the PS3.
>>>Scanning for I.D.I.O.T.S. >>>
>>>I.D.I.O.T.S. FOUND! >>>
It's a little weird to me that the hardware mods that seem to get the most attention are basically plumbing.
I think you've confused this with Super Mario!
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
It's human nature to find patterns in chaos in an effort to understand the world around us. As a consequence it's also human nature to complain about crap because we notice that things aren't as optimal as we like them. Yay us.