Xbox 360 Fanboy

Brilliant!

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No need to translate the Video, its almost the same as you pointed out in your article. Closing line is: "Maybe we found the reason why so many xboxes crash". I say: you did!

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I am a german speaker and well basically all they say is what is mentioned in the post above.

They mention the strange metal foil and say that microsoft are not managing to pull it off before the cool body(?) is added to the processor. He then mentioned that they have probably found the reason why so many xbox 360s worldwide are grinding to a halt.

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I'm positive mine does that too!

I knew mine was a graphics card problem because while it doesnt overheat and crash, it still overheats and i get everyonce and a while wierd lines across the screen exactly in the same fashion as my old graphics card did with the stock cooler. Replacing the cooler fixed it. I may be cracking open my box to see if any issues remain.

Someone should make an after market huge all copper heatsink for the xbox 360. I would buy it!

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All this trouble that the xbox 360 is having would seem to sugest that they are playing in to the hands of the play station 3

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These things are mass produced so the manufacturing machines that make these 360s are going to mess up somewhere at first (causing the first (launch) batch defects), so I am not surprised the machines slipped up somewhere and didn't remove the protection on the thermal pad.

At-least now since the defects are known, they can correct the errors in these plants and we might not have these defects again.

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My console is often on even when I'm not playing it. I havn't had any problem with heat at all. I wonder if this was a problem with one run of consoles or maybe one particular factory. BTW MS does not actually manufacture the consoles themselves. Would be intersting to know if this problem can be localized or if it is all machines. If it can be localized then you could tell by serial # if your machine has the problem.

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The guys at xbox-scene have already debunked this. The foil isn't unusual.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=496524&st=30

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As a builder of PCs I would have to say leaving the foil on is a huge oversight. The whole idea of thermal compound is to ensure efficient thermal transfer.
From the pictures provided, it looks like the foil has some texture to it. If the foil is has ANYTHING BUT a mirror finish, it will inhibit the transfer of heat.
Saying the foil is there in case someone has to remove the heatsink at a future date is ridiculous. Of course, the only way to prove this is to have someone run an Xbox 360 with the thermal pad and foil in place and another with a glob of arctic silver in its place, or find one that has an overheating problem and us arctic silver in it instead of the pad.

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#8, I don't think that would be a fair comparison because Arctic Silver will always perform better than a thermal pad.

A better test would be to have someone test the thermal pad with the foil or without and see what happens to the temps.

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More importantly, the Xbox guys have debunked it. Check it out: http://gamerscoreblog.com/team/archive/2006/03/10/533618.aspx

Perhaps this post could be updated so I don't have to sit through more Slashdot-misinformation 360-bashing around the watercooler?

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I hate to say it but I feel the M$ guys are lying about the foil being there on purpose to aid in cooling.

First off. That would mean that they have made other manufacturing errors due to the fact that some xbox 360 DON'T have the foil while others do. So which ones were assembled improperly?

Secondly. The whole idea behind thermal compound is that it molds the imperfect areas between two imperfect surfaces for better heat conductivity.

Foil is in itself an imperfect surface. So putting a layer of thermal compound and then a layer of foil between a cpu and a heatsink cannot possibly hope to be MORE effective at cooling unless of course your aim is to make the cpu run hotter.

Transferring heat between one layer of thermal paste is ALWAYS going to be more effective at heat transfer than trying to go between 2 layers of anything.

Every time you add a layer to the mix you are adding another opportunity for heat to transfer less effectively to the next (more gaps, molecular cracks and conductive irregularities.

Would it cool decently with the foil there? Possibly. Does the foil actually make it run cooler? Not on your life.

Their reason to lie? Hmmmm...would YOU want to recall all of your xbox 360s? I didn't think so.

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I was re-reading some of the above posts and noticed OMAC pointed out that unless the foil was a "mirror finish" it would not help in heat transfer.

It's worth pointing out that even if the foil WAS a mirror finish, it would need to be placed against another mirror finish surface to dissapate heat well. Not just mirror finish but also 100% flat and without irregularity.

There is almost no situation, unless you are designing parts to NASA standards (and certainly not in a mass production low cost processor heat-sink line) where the level of perfection required for these mirror surfaces would exist.

That is why every last heatsink you see shipped from athon and intel as well as those shipped by 3rd parties have thermal compound included with them.

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quote:

"The guys at xbox-scene have already debunked this. The foil isn't unusual.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=496524&st=30"

Actually it is unusual. And it hasn't been debunked. What is mentioned there is a foil with compound on BOTH SIDES to account for irregularites on both surfaces.

There is no such thing in existance on the xbox 360 foil. It only has compound on ONE SIDE, which is a drastically different design.

They are comparing apples to oranges here.

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