Original Xbox or Gamecube? (I bought an Xbox)

[LewisRaz]

£60 for an OG xbox I remember paying £5 for one a few years back. Guess the capacitors are killing many off early?

 

[almoststew1990]

Well I made a decision and bought an xbox with my CEX vouchers I'd built up over the past year or so. I went ahead with it after reading that motherboard revision 1.6, which fixes the clock capacitor issue, is associated with a 14/03/04 or later mfg date. The one in CEX was 18/03/04. Cutting it a bit fine but it is later right!?

The xbox is immediately on -1000 points becuase it has not been future-proofed to fit inside the IKEA square cabinet things like most of my other consoles and even my ITX PC:

So the fatty is going next my work desk like I feared:

I load it up and check the revision and... it has the older 1.5 motherboard (based on LGR having the same K: number)

So I can now either use it until it dies and get another one with the CEX 2 year warranty or I can "own it" and open it up, clean it out, solder a new cap in (never soldered before), maybe put in the IDE to SATA mod for a quiet drive of some kind...

 

[LewisRaz]

Dont let it die! Plenty of guides to repair

 

[JoeBoi]

Neither. Whenever I price it up on CEX I see the delivery costs and then when I go into town they only have the GameCube and Rogue squadron then I think things like “you

Well I made a decision and bought an xbox with my CEX vouchers I'd built up over the past year or so. I went ahead with it after reading that motherboard revision 1.6, which fixes the clock capacitor issue, is associated with a 14/03/04 or later mfg date. The one in CEX was 18/03/04. Cutting it a bit fine but it is later right!?

The xbox is immediately on -1000 points becuase it has not been future-proofed to fit inside the IKEA square cabinet things like most of my other consoles and even my ITX PC:

So the fatty is going next my work desk like I feared:

I load it up and check the revision and... it has the older 1.5 motherboard (based on LGR having the same K: number)

So I can now either use it until it dies and get another one with the CEX 2 year warranty or I can "own it" and open it up, clean it out, solder a new cap in (never soldered before), maybe put in the IDE to SATA mod for a quiet drive of some kind...

OGs below 1.6 have better video output, and I am sure you can remove the clock cap without any issues (I am sure it is the 1.6s that you cannot). Other caps might be ok?

 

[lakitu]

The GameCube would have fit perfectly inside the IKEA unit so I think you ought to buy one of those also.

 

[almoststew1990]

I decided to go with the 'own it' option and opened it up and cleaned it out of dust. I snipped off the clock capacitor which has barely leaked at all. I clened up the tiny spillage directly under the cap as best I could. I replaced the thermal paste and I have ordered the recommended fan upgrade (Noctua 60mm) plus the 3D printed mounting bracked. I was looking at how I could replace the clicky IDE drive with a SATA drive but that seems to require quite a kerfuffle and softmodding which is a minor kerfuffle so I'll pass on that for now. Clock cap is the bottom left with the blue dot.

Nice

Clean finally

 

[JoeBoi]

The other caps look good as well, no bulging from what I can tell. I'd be interested in how you get on with that fan mod. I recently picked up a 1.0 128MB modded xbox with 1TB HDD. Fan on it is so noisy! Only bought it after I realised my 1.6 isn't compatible with the HD AV pack. Sort of a blessing really, quite a few of the caps on my 1.6 are bulging.

 

[LewisRaz]

Woah that Nvidia chip looks like its had a bad time, is it just dirty?

 

[JoeBoi]

Woah that Nvidia chip looks like its had a bad time, is it just dirty?

Isn't it just really old bad thermal paste?