360 lifespan after "towel trick" to remove RROD

JonJ678

JonJ678

JonJ678

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Simple enough question. If your 360 threw the read ring of death, and you followed internet wisdom and covered it with a wet towel to force it to overheat, how long did it work for afterwards?

I'm wondering how viable the quick-and-cheap approach is as an alternative to resoldering the gpu properly.

Boring thread I know, but I'd be grateful if you'd reply :)
 
a lot of them only last a week or so and people redo it. I never thought the towel was wet though....

The xclamp repair kit is about £5 and is easy to do.
 
Forget the silly 'towel trick'.

Pull it apart and do an oven-bake and x-clamp. Cheap, easy and whilst not always permanent it'll last longer than the towel trick.
 
It'll go again, when it'll happen is purely up to how much usage it gets.
Once you've reseated the gpu I'd recommend the X-clamp mod, you'll notice a difference in how much heat is being pumped out of the back of the case compared to the original version.
 
Perhaps I worded this badly. I don't have an xbox 360 which is experiencing the rrod. I don't have one at all as it happens. However I've dealt with several broken ones in need of repair, which is generally done by removing the gpu, reballing it then soldering it back to the motherboard. This tends to be effective, at least I've not seen a previously repaired one brought back in yet.

However I've also seen a few where the towel method was used to revive it, and the successful repair rate for these is poor. Perhaps a quarter of them can be repaired "conventionally" after this effort.

The xclamp/oven is the poor relation of actually resoldering it, though I'm not surprised that it works better than just forcing the thing to overheat briefly.

This thread is simple curiousity as to how effective the alternatives can be, given persuading a technician to resolder the thing tends to cost around £60 and the other methods suggested are much cheaper.

Thank you all for your replies
 
Mine has RROD'd and I am uncertain of what I need to do to fix it, obviously xclamp & oven have been recommended but not sure exactly how.

And I wouldn't know where to start on resoldering :S
 
I did the towel trick twice, it only worked for about 10 minutes after and then crashed again.

I now have my 360 vertical and it works fine :confused:
 
Use the xclamp replacement, costs £2 and lasts far longer.

The xclamp replacements I have done have lasted years.
 
AHarvey said:
Mine has RROD'd and I am uncertain of what I need to do to fix it, obviously xclamp & oven have been recommended but not sure exactly how.

And I wouldn't know where to start on resoldering :S
Click to expand...

I did the Oven Bake and X-Clamp method last weekend and it was my first time. There are plenty of guides out there. I followed one until it said wrap the motherboard in old T-Shirts then cover in foil. All I did was cover the board in foil and leave the chips uncovered (both sides) put in a 230c pre heated oven for 4-5 minutes. Allowed to cool down, applied AS5 used the X-Clamp kit, put it back together and it worked. I have noticed it chucking a lot of heat out of the case, but this can only be a good thing. It's worked flawlessly so far albeit its only been a week, but it's had quite a hammering on Forza 3 over that week
 
GazD, any good guides you can recommend or is it a case of searching Google and YouTube? I will hopefully be attempting this on the weekend IF my x-clamp kit show up but I doubt it. Damn you royal mail!
 
Five_Star said:
GazD, any good guides you can recommend or is it a case of searching Google and YouTube? I will hopefully be attempting this on the weekend IF my x-clamp kit show up but I doubt it. Damn you royal mail!
Click to expand...

Google will pretty much help you out. Llamma's 360 page will help you with the disassembly and X-Clamp method, then just have a look on google at the oven bake method.
 
theres a few threads with guides on here about the oven baking thing (one of them is mine lol)

As said, it does work, infact it works pretty damn well but inevitably it will break again at some point down the line. After sticking mine in the oven for the first time it lasted about 5 months with pretty heavy usage, but then it started rrod again more frequently and would only last a few weeks ebfore it would need stripping, cooking and rebuilding again. In the end I figured it was just easier to buy a new Jasper arcade for £90 and sell my old xbox as spares.

Wasn't that sure whether the towel trick actually worked either. I mean once your xbox reaches a certain temp it basically shuts down to stop it self from over-heating.....long before it gets hot enough to melt solder! (i think the melting point was around 230 degrees C!)

EDIT: Also, surely a wet towel will actually kill the xbox should any water get inside it?! lol
 
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DreXeL said:
Forget the silly 'towel trick'.

Pull it apart and do an oven-bake and x-clamp. Cheap, easy and whilst not always permanent it'll last longer than the towel trick.
Click to expand...

Quoted for truth. I repaired my friends launch day core for £8 by oven baking and replacing the X-Clamps :).
 
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