Kevin Vs. The Red Ring of Death

***Spawnio.com does not promote hacking, splicing, splitting or doing anything to your video game consoles that is not recommended by the manufacture. If you try any of this and it fails, Spawnio.com will not be held responsible. Keep in mind that this will also VOID YOUR WARRANTY***

It was a normal Saturday for me. I went to work, made it through the day just waiting to get off. After all, I had plans to fire up the Xbox360 that afternoon with some friends. I got home, dropped the keys, grabbed a Dr Pepper and pushed the power button. Three red lights began blinking…

I was the guy always saying, “It won’t happen to me, my Xbox will never red ring.” My friends always assured me it will happen one day and today would be that day.

I did a lot of research on the problem and found that pretty much every Xbox will do it eventually. They say that over a period of time, heating up your Xbox by using it will wear the solider joints on the motherboard chips and create loose contacts. By removing the heat sinks off the CPU and GPU chips, remounting them with screws and dropping the X clamps that are factory installed, actually overheating the system again, this will reconnect everything and the red ring of death will be gone.

I have had my Xbox360 for two years. I know what you are thinking, three year warranty. Yes, I do have another year warranty for a red ringer, however, I had recently had a bit of bad luck with my internet and was offline with no Xbox Live access for a few weeks and now I was faced with probably looking at another month to send it in to be repaired. It was a tough call, lose the rest of my warranty and fix my Xbox or send it in.

I slept on it.

Without even realizing it, I woke up the next day and headed out looking for parts like I had already made up my mind. After a few stops at Lowe’s and a neighborhood hardware store I found everything I needed to tackle the job. One more stop at the BK Lounge to fill up the tummy and I was ready.

There are a few tools needed to do the job. Phillips and flat head screw drivers, T8 & T10 Torx screw drivers, hook & straight pick tool and a small adjustable wrench or pliers. Here is a basic list of the hardware needed. (8) 5mm X 10 screws, (16) 5mm flat washers, (16) 5mm nylon washers, Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound, thermal compound remover and a can of dust remover spray.

Now I am a mechanic by trade so I am good at working with my hands (keep that in your memory banks ladies). I take things apart and trouble shoot for a living. I don’t know how hands-on you are so take caution in attempting this. Removing the case and getting to the motherboard is a little tricky. You can Google it and there are lots of videos on how to do it. When I took my XBOX apart, it wasn’t exactly the same as what was in the video. My XBOX is a newer version and my heat sinks didn’t look the same. There are different ways to remount the heat sinks so when you get yours apart, don’t freak out if it doesn’t look exactly the same. No matter what version you have, the hardware is still the same. Here are a couple links that helped me disassemble and repair my Xbox.

Crunchgear.com

This took me about 4 hours to do. From the time I went out and got everything I needed to actually repairing the Xbox. If I had to do it again, it would probably take me an hour. I didn’t find it very difficult to disassemble the unit, just needed a little direction on how to do it. Remember, if you still have a warranty left on your Xbox I would probably recommend sending it to Microsoft. If you are like me and have a hard time putting the controller down, fix that baby. Good luck, and please leave a comment if you have a question I would be happy to answer anything you need to know if I can!