Oh Noes! Another Xbox Thread by Me! (360 reliability thread)

[Yoshiman]

Come Thursday, I'll officially have enough money to buy an Xbox 360.

However, there's one thing that's keeping me from purchasing said system; The Ring of Death. From what I hear, the Ring of Death is caused by an internal hardware failure, which is generally the X-clamp inside the system warping due to heat and causing parts to disconnect from the mainboard.

Some people have had their systems dead out of the box, others had them for about a year and then break, or like my friend, whose had her system from launch, work fine and still going strong.


Now, eventually I'll want a 360, especially with Halo 3 and Resident Evil 5 coming out on it. My question is, has Microsoft planned/started to manufacture more reliable systems? I hear the failure rate (according to retailers) for the 360 is around 30%, which is a little disheartening. :/

Now, suppose I get the system, and it fails on me. I could send it back and all that, or I could attempt to mod it (using this tutorial) and possibly eliminate the problem.


For those too lazy to read all of this/summary:

- What are the chances that if I buy a 360, it'll fail?
- What is Microsoft doing to fix this problem?

[DarkDragoonX]

Yeah, the failure rate concerns me, as well... I have a friend who is now on his third 360. He doesn't mistreat them in any way, they just... break. Taking into account my buddy's problems and what information I've seen on the internet, the odds of failure seem to be fairly high.

As far as I know, Microsoft hasn't done anything to fix it. In fact, from what I've read coming out of Microsoft, they appear to be trying their hardest to pretend the problem doesn't even exist.

[MottZilla]

The failing systems are believed by some to primarily be in older systems and newer systems fare better. Reasons for what happens all tend to be related to poor manufacturing or intense heat leading to ussually the GPU section of the board losing connection. The best thing to do is insure you get plenty of airflow around your 360. It also doesn't hurt to buy a extended warrenty or replacement plan from a retailer.

I'm on my 2nd system and it's going strong. Just make sure the hot air from the back of the 360 go away from the unit. A simple desk fan can work wonders. Personally I believe is shitty soldering from uncalibrated machines.

[AlexMax]

The lack of reliability is pretty much the only thing scaring me away from a 360 at this point. Like you, I don't want to invest that much in a console only for it to die six months later.

[Orn]

Well mine is from Jan 2006, and its always worked great.. asside from occational freezing. There was one incident of the dreded ring of death.. but it was not permiminently screwed up.

From what I've read, the bricking problems are mostly from the launch consoles. Microsofts increased confidence is reflected in their warently extention to 1 year.

If your still worried, you could wait till new 360's are upgraded to 65nm processors (this fall), which would lower the amount of heat that is created. I've heard that that model will replace the Premium models, and also have the HDMI ports of the elite model.

Note that the Elite models already has an HDMI port, and has less overheating problems.

[Cloral]

The posts in this thread prove why MS needs to take these reports of failures more seriously. It is driving down the sales of their system. Instead of dancing around the problem, they need to come out and say, "This is what went wrong, this is what we're doing to fix it, and any that do fail will be fixed free of charge." This might cost them a bit in the short run, but would lead to much better sales in my opinion.

As for them fixing the issue, I've heard from a few places that the newer 360s and 360s that have been fixed now have an extra heat sink in them. This should make them more reliable. And it would probably be best to operate your 360 in the open air, instead of cramped up in a home theater cabinet where it can't breathe properly.

[MottZilla]

Repaired Xbox 360's have extra cooling around the GPU area and such from what I hear.

[Warlock]

Repaired Xbox 360's have extra cooling around the GPU area and such from what I hear.

Right, that's what I heard too. So if all else fails, send it in for repair and they'll add more fans :)

But yeah, so far mine has been just fine. Though it has only been about two months (but my little brother plays it constantly while I am at work so it is at least getting used quite often)

[vegeta1215]

If I buy another current gen system, it would be the X-Box 360. But I have to agree that the issues I've read about are not something I want to have to worry about, esp considering the price of not only the system, but the games.

I played 360 over my friends house and witnessed some of the freezing problems. I don't know how often it occurred for him, but he had the Best Buy protection plan and got a replacement at no cost, and so far it has been perfect he says. So, maybe they are getting all the kinks out.

[DarkDragoonX]

What irritates me is that there have been so many "kinks" to begin with.

Also, as Cloral said, if they came right out and said "yeah, there are some issues, and we're working towards a resolution, and we'll replace consoles that fail due to this flaw," then I'd be a lot more confident. The fact that Microsoft has tried to ignore the problem's existence (at least in public) really agitates me. Every time some interviewer asks a microsoft rep about the high failure rate, they always get some response along the lines of "Well, people love the console and continue to buy the console, so THERE!"

This is a perfect example, and it's really bloody obnoxious.