Ways to prevent the red ring of death

penguinofwar · 03-04-2010, 02:17 PM

So I am most likely getting an xbox 360 and as with anybody it'd be nice if this never happened to mine. From what I hear its easy to prevent if you do a few things, such as preventing overheating (which is the number one cause). So do you guys know anything you can do to prevent it?

Cam42 · 03-04-2010, 04:15 PM

keep it cool, but don't waste money on an external fan for it
Keep it well ventilated, don't keep it with blankets, you should be fine.

***Art*** · 03-04-2010, 05:28 PM

Off the carpet, on something solid with airflow in front and behind.

**SupaNova** · 03-04-2010, 06:25 PM

I thought Microsoft fixed the red rings thing after the initial batch of 360s came out. Is this not the case?

penguinofwar · 03-04-2010, 06:59 PM

The systems are a lot better now but people still occaisonally get the red ring of death.

Napoleon17 · 03-04-2010, 07:19 PM

Always practice safe gaming

**SporkV** · 03-04-2010, 07:21 PM

I believe RRoD is caused by overheating, so just keep it well ventilated.

Tim Possible · 03-04-2010, 07:23 PM

I had mine for almost three years before I got it....and it saw a ton of use.

Skifree0813 · 03-16-2010, 11:12 AM

Just got it the other day... I actually did some research on it out of curiosity and found out the biggest cause. Although they're not "completely worthless" as some people claim, the X-clamps on the bottom of the motherboard are the main cause (aside from carelessness resulting in overheating) of the ring. Apparently they're slightly bent and pull the board quite a fair bit when attached, and more so when they heat up at all. As explained by Microsoft, two lights is simply overheating while three lights is a "general hardware failure." Most likely that simply means the clamps have warped the board and caused much frustration to the owner. I spoke with a good friend yesterday about all these X-clamp replacement fixes and whatnot, and he said they're actually pretty good (and not as temporary as most people claim). I'm probably going to do it to mine in the next few days or so. I'll post results in case anyone else runs into this at some point.

penguinofwar · 03-16-2010, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skifree0813

Just got it the other day... I actually did some research on it out of curiosity and found out the biggest cause. Although they're not "completely worthless" as some people claim, the X-clamps on the bottom of the motherboard are the main cause (aside from carelessness resulting in overheating) of the ring. Apparently they're slightly bent and pull the board quite a fair bit when attached, and more so when they heat up at all. As explained by Microsoft, two lights is simply overheating while three lights is a "general hardware failure." Most likely that simply means the clamps have warped the board and caused much frustration to the owner. I spoke with a good friend yesterday about all these X-clamp replacement fixes and whatnot, and he said they're actually pretty good (and not as temporary as most people claim). I'm probably going to do it to mine in the next few days or so. I'll post results in case anyone else runs into this at some point.

Sorry to hear about the xbox, but thats sweet and l'm interested if that counts to see how it works. My basement is pretty cold and only one side of my Xbox is covered (by this plastic cabinet box that its sitting on) so right now I think I'm pretty safe. And thanks for all the responses, they helped.

**slap_j** · 03-16-2010, 03:10 PM

This goes for any game console: keep it clean. Excess dust can stifle airflow and raise the internal temperature. Use a vacuum or compressed air for the vents.

Skifree0813 · 03-18-2010, 09:16 PM

So. I finally got around to cracking open the console tonight. And apparently it's been modded already and is missing the main parts that I was going to take out in the first place. So I poked around some, found a couple points that looked like they should have been grounded and weren't, bent them against the sides and closed it back up in frustration. Hit the power button out of curiosity and got green. At this point I jumped up, danced around the kitchen whooping like a 5-year-old boy, then turned back to see a frozen screen. Which was then replaced by the red lights upon restarting.

Needless to say (but being said anyway) I'm back where I started minus a possible solution. I'll be running by GameStop tomorrow.

conceived in fire · 03-19-2010, 05:35 PM

I don't know if it really helps (and it might be obvious), but I imagine burning your games to disc would help. Using less power = less heat, right?