Hi, I have an xbox laptop, and was not happy with it because the cpu fan was producing far too much noise. Before all the mods, I tested it with 1 hour of gameplay, and the heatsink felt quite warm with the fan speed at max. I have now jb welded another heatsink on, and attached a 2nd heatsink with a little copper pipe. Both heatsinks seem to work well, as I tested the xbox for another hour, with the fan still set to max, and the heatsink was relatively cool. With the heatsink cool, I decided to step the voltage of the fan from 5v to 4v. This made the xbox much queter, but after an hour of gameplay, the heatsink felt slightly hotter than when I had done no mods atall. It was still comfortable to touch, but was fairly hot. My questions are:

Should I increase the fan speed again?
I dont have a temp monitor installed, so when the heatsink gets too hot, I assuming it is not ok, am I right?
Will the xbox automatically shut down if it does get too hot and not cause any damage?
(I have heard that the gpu doesnt shut of automatically, but the cpu does?)
Should I add even more heatsinks?

Here is a video I have just made of a tour around the inside of the xbox, incuding a look at the cpu heatsink arrangement -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3YnuxUeGRI&feature=player_embedded

Thanks,

Seb Smith

lol, i was getting bored here without any xbox questions



Its a good idea to yes, it may be working fine at the lower voltage but it does raise the risk of a cracked solder joint caused from stress

They get hot/warm anyway, not something to be concerned about.

Yes, it will shut down and give you the 2 red quadrants. The idea is to not let it do that, you can risk damaging the hardware.
hence why purposely overheating during a 'fix' is a very bad idea (i.e. towel trick, old x-clamp fix etc.)


If you decide to keep the fans at the 4v, then yes.
try to space the 'mini heatpipe' heatsinks around the empty space in the console.
like they are in this;

thanks a lot for the help, will maybe add a few more heatsink next weekend, cant right now becuase I am taking it into school to do a talk about it tomorrow! I also have a spare 20mm 5v fan I could add if necessary. It wont be put under too much stress at school, and will probably not be on longer than 15 mins, so I suppose this would be fine? Also, about an hour ago, when I was downstairs, my little brother switched the xbox on without me knowing in my bedroom. It must have been idling for at least 45mins, and the heatsinks weren't too hot. Also, I am wondering, at what temperature will the console turn itself off at?

thanks for the very fast/very helpful/very detailed help!

seb smith

the highest temp it can reach before it hits the final failsafe is 90ºc
they usually run at about 45ºc

anytime man

before i did the mods, it ran at 40 degrees max while on load. I am estimating it is running at around 45-48 degrees now, so it should be fine hopefully thats ok.

thanks

seb smith

just to make this clear, the 90ºc failsafe is the last one, there is another one at about 55-60ºc or so which triggers the 2 red rings/overheat

oh, that really good to know, so if the xbox gets the 2 rings, i will then switch it off immediately and improve the cooling. it shouldn't get beyond 50 max though, so i should be fine! The english talk went really well today(just got home from school) I got a grade 1(which is the best grade) and then I was requested by the technical teacher to do it to their class, they understood it more, and I think they enjoyed it more. The technical teacher was very impressed, and said if I wanted to use the cnc router at school(a denford 2600 pro) i could do so at any time. I will be saving up for the next xbox laptop build: the xbox laptop slim, where i will aim to make it as small, feature rich and as quite as possible, and mill the case out with the cnc router!

thanks (you did get a mention in the talk for all the help you have provided me with!)

seb smith

CNC'd portable cases are delicious. Can't wait to see where you're headed with that next laptop!

yes, i am planning everything in my head, until i have to spend ages on the computer drawaing it all out...