Two 360 Cooling Modifications with a Talismoon Whisper Fan, Arctic Silver and a Soldering Iron

For a short time play.com were selling core xbox 360’s for £149.99 delivered - so, sticking to my if it ain’t broke, take it apart and fix it philosophy, I took the opportunity to have a second x360 to experiment with more than I normally would with my main gaming machine.

When the console arrived it was immediately identified as having an Hitachi DVD drive with the 78FK bios and I couldn’t resist putting to practice the recent work by Maximus. Unfortunately I later found that the 360 suffered from stability issues and tended to crash approximately every half hour (an issue unrelated to the flash). My first suspicion was that heat was the problem (it is also known that the power supply or even live updates have been causing some people issues) and with my warranty still warm and lying in tatters on the floor, I set about looking for third party solutions.

An obvious start is to remove the poor quality thermal compound that Microsoft use and replace it with a high quality counterpart e.g. Arctic Silver. Secondly a simple drop in replacement for the (in my opinion) under powered fans is an easy upgrade to perform. I choose the Talismoon Whisper Fan (in green).

These simple modifications did show a small improvement in both noise and airflow, however provided only a 2-3 degree drop in CPU and GPU temperature when under heavy load.

Next I decided to modify the stock fans to run at their designed 12v instead of the 6v supplied by the 360. This is done by removing the two positive pins in the fan’s plastic power block then connecting the wires together and to a 12v supply. There are plenty of good 12v spots on the 360 motherboard to use but be careful when choosing one to make sure the supply is cut when the 360 is turned off - not all of them do.

This modification had two extreme effects. Firstly the noise from the fans is unbelievably loud. And I don`t mean ‘the 360 is so loud in comparison to the PS3′ loud, I mean Harrier Jump jet loud. And secondly, the temperature drop is equally unbelievable. At idle both CPU and GPU temperatures were way below room temperature and under load there was not much change. more accurate numbers to follow

Unfortunately even this impressive temperature drop in both core and case temperatures had no affect on the stability of my 360. And even more unfortunate for me, it was about this time that my original 360 finally buckled and I got my first taste of the 3 lights of death. I think the modified 360 will be going to GT electronics in Dundee to get fixed, however I`m tempted to try and bring the RoL 360 back using the heat gun technique … updates to follow.

- FIN -