Xbox360 Heatsink Issue: Over-Heating Problem Solved

sonderiaom

sonderiaom

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Alright, I was surfing the TFW2005 boards and found this interesting thread. They found out everything from This place. Basically what it states is this:[quote name='Shin-Gouki']They are leaving the protective plastic on the heatsinks!!!!!

"Arakon from the german modding community modcontrol.com informed us about a new discovery they made with assistance from the guys at gamestore24.de.
They checked on 2 independantly bought Xbox 360 consoles and found that the protective layer on the GPU heatsink's heat transfer pad didn't get removed.

On the left you see the CPU heatsink and how the thermal compound should normally look like. On the right you see the ATI GPU heatsink and people who are used to assemble PCs themself known this isn't how it should look like. It's not just a thick layer of compound ... there's actaully a plastic protective foil on top of the thermal compound.



On the left a close-up of the protective layer/foil on top of the heat transfer pad. On the right the protective foil has been removed and placed next to the heat pad. This protective layer is probably placed by the manifacturer of the heatsink and is used to protect the heat transfer pad from dust, but should normally be removed just prior installing the heatsink on the GPU. The way it's installed now by MS the GPU chip makes contact with the plastic protection foil instead of the heat transfer pad. This can of course cause cooling issues for the graphics chip as for optimal cooling performance there should just be a thin layer of thermal pad between the GPU chip and heatsink."


[/quote]
 
Ha, that's interesting. If heat is such a big issue, I'd upgrade the heatsink to one that was all copper and put some Artic Silver 3 for the thermal paste. Maybe add a small fan on top to make sure that sucker stays cool.
 
Well, that WOULD do it, wouldn't it...? What happens when you seblet production out to god knows how many plants. Ok, it's like 5, but still.
 
So the question is, do you take apart your 360 and void any potential fixes from microsoft just to find out if this applies to your 360?
 
So I'm guessing only some 360's have this foil on? Because mine has never had heat problems. Even playing GRAW for hours on end the past couple days, the sides of my console are still cool as a cucumber.
 
Hilariously boneheaded mistake, although personally I have yet to have an overheating issue. I'm assuming mine does not fall into this category.
 
[quote name='KaneRobot']Hilariously boneheaded mistake, although personally I have yet to have an overheating issue. I'm assuming mine does not fall into this category.[/quote]

I would have to think that it was just one plant that was doing this. In this case, only a fraction of the xbox's would have the plastic still left on, but that would coincide with the amount of xbox's to be having the overhearting issues.
 
I figured the point of the article was some 360s had it and others didn't, but since they only apparently checked two and then wrote the article I guess it's likely that it is intentional.
 
[quote name='Ruined']Not a mistake.

It's there intentionally to help with heat transfer and possibly also to level the plane between the eDRAM and GPU.

Examples of commercially available thermal tape using aluminum foil:
http://www.aavidthermalloy.com/products/options/tapes.shtml
(See models T405R/T412)

Looks like XBOX-SCENE didn't do their research (nor did many others jumping on this bandwagon).[/quote]
Alright then, it could very well not be a mistake. I'd just figure I'd spread some interesting 'news' that I thought I'd found. I wouldn't put it past for something like this to happen though, with Microsoft rushing out the 360 I could certainly see them telling a plant to work faster and that plant would 'conveniently' forget to take off the tape to save time and pump more out.

Edit: As well, I just found this on Kotaku
 
Whats up with that gigantimous heatsink anyways? That thing looks like you could kill someone with it.
 
[quote name='sonderiaom']Edit: As well, I just found this on Kotaku[/QUOTE]

Being repeated does not make it accurate. That web site is just doing the same thing you did.
 
I'm guessing MS simply bought a shitload of thermal material from different companies and they differed slightly in build. As long as it meets the spec, its good to go.

This summation of posts from B3D (combined with my post above) pretty much blow a hole through the original theory:
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=715877&postcount=25

Note that this has also been added to the original website's news story:
[quote name='XBOX SCENE (original story poster)']*UPDATE* Several people on our forums say that this 'Indium' foil has probably been placed there intentionally, is part of the thermal pad and should not be removed. Apparently similar foil is used some OEM PCs, P4 and some PC GPU chips. While it looks like most people agree that normal thermal paste/compound without such a layer usually works better, one of the advantage of such a layer is that a heatsink can easily be re-installed without re-applying thermal paste after you removed it. You can follow the discussion about it here.[/quote]
 
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