XBox 360, How to get a quiet one?

I went for the Elite, the most noise comes from the damn optical drive, but once you install the game to disc its silent (no where near ps3 levels, but good enough).

Addicted to PGR4 now omg...

Now that i own both i can say that i feel the 360 feels the better machine, the interface is more polished. Saying that the games are more or less the same over both consoles, its just the 360 presents it better and makes it easy to play with friends.

Just my 2p :)
Happy owner!
 
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Maybe later today (depending on if there is any post in London today!) I will post up some pics of a mod I have done on mine to cure the noise.

Basically I cut out all the grills at the back and am going to put 2x 80mm silent fans on instead as these will be quiet and push more air than the stock 70mm Deltas.

In my recent research I discovered that even if you can get the Nidec fans they increase the chances of RROD as they are not as good as the Deltas. It would appear that the best way to get decent cooling & noise levels is to mod your 360 and invalidate the warranty. You can buy a Lian Li XB01 case for around £80 and even mod this for more cooling. It will be quiet & cool. I've seen some which also have PC HSFs & water cooling for the ultimate.

MS are very unlikely to ever fix this noise issue as the thermal design is flawed which is why they have to use the noisy Deltas (90% of all 360s have the Deltas in them) to pull the hot air out quickly. One of the design engineers even talks about this on the official forums.
 
IMO best and only way to shut up an xbox 360 is to get a nice solid wood cabinet with glass doors, chuck it inside, close the doors and that dampens the noise a fair bit, i also put a bit of foam underneath to get rid of all the humming caused by vibration on wood. its the damned drives that are noisy not the actual console, mine is barely audible when drive tray is open messing about the dashboard but as soon as you put a disk in its like a leafblower, considering i also own a PS3 its not so good to say the least, not when you think how silent PS3s are :( why did microsoft give them such noisy drives?
 
I have had two now (first died with dreaded red ring of death). The first was bought on the day they were released in the UK.

It was resonably quiet...but died. The replacement is like a 747 on full open throttles...rubbish. I use it as an HTPC and you need a fair amount of volume to drown it out. Moral...with standard units it pot luck.
 
Modded my 360 today to take 2 x 80mm silent fans.

Not recommended as it overheated because the fans cannot pull the air out quickly enough. I may try faster models but that means the noise will increase so defeats the objective. Looks like the 360 is not an easy beast to shut up as you need 70mm high RPM high CFM fans which are not silent at all.

Water is probably the best method or a Lian Li XB01 case transplant!
 
The only thing I can do is copy the games to the HDD, takes the noise away from the disk drive but the noise doesn't really bother me anyway. Surely the sound coming out of your speakers will stamp out the xbox noise anyway?
 
Can't hear my PAL console down stairs when i'm playing a game but when i'm sat at my desk upstairs on my NTSC console the noise is almost unbearable. Good job i've got some loud speakers! :o
 
install games to hdd, change standard fan in the xbox, also change the speed of the optical drive, though this invalidates your warrenty and is not allowed :P
 
I was offered a borked 360 the other day quiet cheap. Thought about getting an X-clamp kit and fixing it. Installing games to HDD would be great but are there any quieter fans which can be bought for it to make it quieter?
 
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