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."

Comments

One question:

[ajlitt]

Why?

Re:One question:

[makeajazznoisehere]

Obviously, so it doesn't set the carpet on fire!

Re:One question:

[aplusjimages]

Because the 360 has heat problems. The heat problem is so bad that 3rd parties make these fan units to attach to the 360 fans

Re:One question:

[KDR_11k]

How's that ironic? The optical drive in my PC is the noisiest part as well, at least when the disc in there is copy protected.

Re:One question:

[THESuperShawn]

I have one from the origional production set. It has never crashed, and it has never "locked up". It does not run that hot. Mine is in an A/V rack with a good deal of high-end equipment. I have never had a problem.

Other than the "coolness" factor, I don't see where this mod is a necessity. I would not mind it (or a similar mod that replaced the noise of the stock fans)if it quieted down the 360, however. There are times when mine sounds like a harrier preparing for vertical flight take-off. While its not a big deal when I am playing games, it can be annoying when I am streaming video/movies/wm9HD from other machines. I have been wanting to tackle replacing the fans and openening the ducts a bit to see if I can quiet it myself. A smaller replacement for the huge power brick would be welcomed as well.

I may have simply been lucky in that my 360 has never crashed or overheated, but I just don't see a reason for all the quality complaints. Especially from non-360 owners whose only basis is hearsay.

performance?

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

More importantly

[steveo777]

Shouldn't someone be cooling the power supply? That's the real problem.

Official mag?

[Rob T Firefly]

[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?

Unacceptable

[prichardson]

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).

Re:Unacceptable

[bill_kress]

When I started looking at consoles a couple years ago, I came to the exact same conclusion.

I used a new scientific method I call the "store test", which is basically if a store can't keep it on line, I don't really want it.

As I went through Target, Kmart, Bestbuy, Wal-mart and anywhere else with the "Three-console display" I took effort to note what was up and what was crashed.

XBox--rarely up, maybe 1/3 of the time (A very optomistic estimate, I think). Almost always had some kind of internal error--probably overheating in those display cases. Reset never helps.

PS/2--up about 1/2 the time. Now, that sounds great next to the xbox but we are talking about a system that should NEVER go down. Actually the newer displays stay up much more, I think they are using the new slim-line ps/2s. Reset sometimes helps.

GameCube--Never never never down. I have yet to see a gamecube down in a display case unless the entire case was down (probably due to the xbox catching fire inside there--dunno).

Anyway, if you want a worry-free livingroom device for the family, I doubt you can beat the gamecube. Wish it had more serious games, but whatever.

Why not freeze it?

[reset_button]

Cool it to 4.5 Kelvins and crank out those cycles! :)

yawn... bling!

[s800]

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.

Re:Websense

[Valthan]

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..

*Yawn*

[electrosoccertux]

Everything inside the case? Boring! My 360 water cooling system is inside AND outside the case. And it keeps the fishies warm

Re:COOL but Illegal?

[springbox]

No, this is not illegal, but it will most definitely void any sort of warranty you might have. Even changing the operation of the system might be against Microsoft's Terms of Service if you try to go online with it, but the idea that changing your system's case (something that you OWN) would be "illegal" is certainly a scary thought.

Re:Glycol?

[lowrydr310]

"Water", or even "mineral oil" doesn't sound as sciency as "glycol" or "isopropynol".

How about some Dihydrogen Monoxide instead?

Fairly obvious why...

[Benanov]

Because now it also functions as a humidifier! ;)

Oh please

[Moraelin]

These are the same idiots whose entry into the console market was taking expensive commodity pc parts and shoving it into a big ugly black box.

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.

These are the same idiots who are trying to charge gamers 50 dollars a year just to play games online.

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.

These are the same idiots who can't even get more the a handful of games to be backwards compatible.

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.

These are the same idiots who have brought crashes and patches to console gaming.

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.

Re:Pull The 360 From The Market, Microsoft!

[prophetic oblivion]

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.

Re:COOL but Illegal?

[_merlin]

ModChips are not illegal because they violate any hardware license agreement. Unlike software which you typically buy a license to use (MS/Apple/etc. own the software, and sell you a license to use it - you own nothing), you typically buy hardware (you own you Xbox/PowerBook/OptiPlex/etc.).

ModChips are illegal because they are promoted as being useful for circumventing copyright (i.e. "Buy this ModChip and play burned games!"). In Australia, ModChips are legal if they are only promoted for the purposes of defeating region coding (i.e. "Buy this ModChip and play imported Japanese games!").

Retrofitted water cooling isn't promoted as being useful for circumventing copyright, and I can't think of any way it possibly could be used for circumventing copyright. There is absolutely nothing illegal about it.

Your post is not insightful, it is ignorant.