The Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death is described as a gaming enthusiast's worst nightmare. It is characterised by the lighting up of the LED lights on the front of the console.
The LEDs, which are normally green and form a ring of light when the console is turned on, flash red indicating a hardware malfunction has occurred.
Only three lights in the ring turn red- the upper right quadrant light is the only light that does not flash red. The result of this renders the console unusable.
SquareTrade, a well-known warranty provider whom conducted a study on a sample group of some 1000 SquareTrade warranties for the Xbox 360 between April 1 and July 31 2007, reported that Microsoft's Xbox 360 ultimate gaming console had a failure rate of 16.4%. 9.8% ( another study found 54% here ) of these failures were due to the ''Red Ring of Death'' (RROD) hardware malfunction.
The percentage rates above are only indicative of warranties covered by SquareTrade.
Other problems reported were power issues, disc read errors, hard drive malfunctions and video card failures.
Sources say that the Xbox 360 has experienced as much as a 40% failure rate, mostly attributed by the notorious three flashing lights, however this has not yet been confirmed. We can certainly say though, that gaming console repair specialists , have been inundated with enquiries and repair requests for the hardware malfunction, due to Microsoft's haste to release the first Next Generation gaming console. It would not be surprising if the 54% failure rate was indeed correct.
Many Xbox 360 owners who have met with the fatal problem will have most probably logged online to do some research. The how and whys are diverse, depending on what sites you're on, and can be quite confusing to those who are not technical or are just casual gamers. Many technicians (and modders) agree though, that the RROD has been caused mainly by a combination of overheating, bad manufacturing and inadequate quality control.
With our technological capabilities today and our ability to build stronger and higher performing main processors (CPUs) and graphics processors (GPUs)- that draw even more power thus generating more heat and stress within a system - it is of utmost importance to focus on internal heat/thermal management. The Xbox 360 gaming system, undoubtedly equal to that of a computer in terms of hardware and capabilities, is more much more compact and offers very little ventilation compared with the computer. As the system draws power and generates excessive amounts of heat, dissipation of heat is inadequate and the connections between the CPU and GPU, and the console's motherboard becomes stressed.
The motherboard itself is connected to the case by the edges, rather than being centrally pinned which results in the flexing and warping of the motherboard as the system reaches excessive temperatures. Together with inadequate heat sinks (metal grill-looking object that absorbs and dissipates heat from the chips using thermal contact) and the way they are attached to the board, places stress on the corners of the CPU and GPU and detaches the chips off their solder joints, and most importantly the BGA eprom chip. This is a major cause of the RROD.
Those who are a little technical and have exceeded their warranty, may have researched online on how to take matters into their own hands and self-fix the problem. Various 'cures' and 'fixes' to rid the dreaded three red lights are documented widely online, including the towelling method, clamping method (X-Clamp fix), ( both of these methods can create more harm than good )
It is not recommended that you take your console apart and try to repair or fix it yourself . Some may have tried removing the three flashing lights & end up bringing the console to us in a worse state and decreasing the chances of properly getting it up and running again.
Some pondering thoughts on the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death (RROD)...
It can strike an unsuspecting owner without any given warning, or games will start to freeze once the console heats up whilst in play (especially for high graphics games such as Call of Duty 4).
Turn the console off. Let it cool (for hours or maybe even days). Unplug all the cables and remove the hard drive. Try re-plugging all cables and hard drive back and booting up again. If you are lucky the 360 ring of death will have gone away.
Not all Xbox 360s face the red ring of death. Yes, a modded console can face the red ring of death, however it does not cause it. Take regular breaks to let your console and the system within it COOL DOWN.
Above you can see the XBOX 360 printed circuit board populated with its components including the critical GPU, CPU and Memory Chip chips.
And shown below is the XBOX CPU component which is Ball Grid Array (BGA) styled package
| | | Because BGA's such as this GPU chip have less metal content than the old traditional components with leads, these chips are more sensitive to high temperatures requiring that the PCB be preheated before any rework can be performed so as not to damage them during your rework or repair.
Effective, pre-heating is simply required to successfully reflow or rework the XBox 360 chips , @ 360s-r-us we follow a strict profile on dark infra red machines to reball/rework the machine |
Q & A`s
Why does my XBOX Flash 3 Red Lights? (Or 1 for Error 74/73)
Regardless of what others will attempt to have you believe, The connections on the lead free BGA (Ball Grid Array) chips of the xbox 360 are fracturing. Very fine micro fractures occur from heating and cooling of the system. Leaded BGA have been around for years and never had this problem because leaded solder conforms with the heating and cooling. A reflow is only a temporary solution, These consoles were failing after 6 months of being released and there is no better way to reflow from the factory, The faulty solder must be replaced to fix the problem for good.
ask any qualified repair expert ` and they will tell you that most manufacturers have had trouble since rohs was introduced (ps3 yellow light of death is also bga related )
Why is LEAD better?
Lead is far superior for this application because of the circumstances it is to endure. Lead solder is maluable and does not fracture,
It is able to conform and move with any stresses the console can throw at it,
Leaded BGAs have been used for years before release of XBOX 360 and PS3 but have not needed these extreme services.
xbox 1 , ps1 & ps2 bga`s were near bulletproof !!!
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How we reball the graphics bga chip
1st we dismantle the 360 , we then place the motherboard on a pcb support (stops flexing when reworking )
we use dark infra red reworking stations to heat the board up to unleaded solder melting point
once the temperature has been reached , we carefully remove the gpu chip
We then remove all solder from the chip and motherboard
Then we clean and apply amtech flux to the underside of chip , & apply stencil
With stencil on top of bga we begin filling with new high quality solder balls 0.6mm
When every hole has been filled , we place the chip in a specialized reflow oven
After following strict profile ( heating up to a thermal graph and cooling ) , the chip comes out perfect !!
Then we clean up the board and apply flux and prepare for resoldering
Once we aligned the chip to the motherboard , we solder back on ,this needs to be aligned perfect as theres tons of ic`s
(ic`s are the little solder balls we attached that connect the chip to the motherboard)
Now we have 1 repaired 360 , we install our cooling upgrade , re-assemble and test ( 24 hours on cod mw2 )
Voila !! ` another satisfied gamer !!
Be very wary of websites offering cheap 3 red light repairs , even if they claim to reflow the problem chips
the majority of them will not go to the long drawn out process we have , instead they take a blow torch to your precious console
the dark infra red reworking machines we use cost thousands of pounds and are the only way to repair a console
they do-not harm the chips or any surrounding components , and are the only safe way to repair your 360
even when we reflow , we only use the same specialized equipment we use for the procedure above