My Overheating Xbox 360 Experience

I had the two rings over heating Xbox failure several months ago. I found out that only the 4 ring (i.e the Red Ring of Death) is covered under the extended 3 year warranty. Pretty worthless considering both are overheating issues. I wrote about this before but basically I tried to clean it off, inspect the fans, and put new thermal compound on it but nothing worked. I didn’t want to buy a new one but had so much invested in Rock Band songs that it was hard to walk away.

A friend suggested I give a guy a call that he saw on his work message boards and has this site. I was super skeptical because it didn’t sound on the up-and-up. The reason I thought this was because it was basically a guy picking up Xbox’s outside a local restaurant in St Charles. A second person posted on my friend’s work message board that his fix worked so I figured I would give it a try since what did I have to lose since it was basically useless.

The guy charges $35 (unless it’s unrepairable) but the estimate to fix  is free. Their main fix is to reflow the chips with a special machine. He also does a modification on the fan to keep it running at full power which cost another $10 (even thought he charged me $5). He told me it would be loud so made sure I did not use my xbox for watching movies. He claimed the change would decrease heat by 30 degrees which is a pretty bold statement.

I got the xbox and he told me he reflowed it and put in bolts for the heat sink clamps (something that makes much more sense than the stupid X clamps that MS used). I took the unit home and fired it up. The first thing I noticed is the loudness. I was expecting it to be first generation loud like some of my friends but it is 3 times louder. I don’t notice it when playing games but definitely can when it’s idle. I probably wouldn’t have done this if I knew it was this loud but then again it will probably prevent it from breaking again.

All in all, it is still working after several hours of COD Modern Warfare 2 and Rock Band.

I would make a couple suggestions to the guy running this service even though it sounds like he is running a pretty successful business and I would recommend him to anyone with Xbox 360 problems.

1. Have some kind of receipt/contract for when you turn your $300 xbox over to a random stranger in a mall parking lot. I asked him about a receipt and he said no one ever asked him about that even though he thought it was a good idea. He claimed to do a over a dozen fixes a week so business must be good.
2. Workout a better drop off process. It just makes the whole thing shady. You have a great word of mouth business but it could be better if you had more of a professional front.
3. Detail the 40 day warranty that you claim in a contract. A spoken warranty is never good for a business.