Yup the xbox is recovering from three red ring of death and it looked a bit sad.
Flames make everything go faster… Its a scientific fact. Fixing my xbox rrod and slapping a bit more awesome on for go measure.
I took the heatsinks off the motherboard, cleaned the old crusty gunk off the cpu, and gpu, put Arctic silver paste on it. replaced the x clamps with screws and washers.
A couple of tips.
Wd40 cleans the old paste off like a dream. Hands down the best option for removing the old paste. I tried acetone and isoprople alcohol. Acetone is pretty caustic, and the alcohol took way too long.
go slowly and follow your guide of choice. Take notes and keep a clean work surface.
If your guide suggests you drill the heat sinks, bake the xbox in An oven or anything else crazy… Get a new guide.
I used this guide to take the Xbox apart
And I used a bunch of other guides to explain the rest but it’s simple. Clean the old crap off and put wonderful new crap on.
To replace the X clamps you will need
- 8 M5 .80 x 10 mm machine screws,
- 16 number 10 rubber or nylon washers. I had to use 1/4 inch washers, which fit but you need to clip 4 of them to make it work right.
For tools you need an 8 and 12 torx bits. A tiny Phillips screwdriver. to take the box apart
So the fix is in, the box is drying and i’m almost done worrying.
Update: it’s been a long day, totally unrelated to the Xbox, but at least it gave the paint plenty of time to dry.
The light is green, the trap is clean!