Xbox 360 E red ringing, please help

[m0oble]

I've had this 360 for about 11 years (July 2013?) and for the entirety of that time, it ran with no issues.

About 2 weeks ago, after it had been off for about a month, it started to red ring.

I got it to turn on after about 30 minutes from just turning it off and back on, unplugging it and holding the power button, swapping the HDMI from monitor to capture card, etc. Each time that I had gotten it to actually boot it was from something random, I'm not sure which thing worked but I do know that none of them worked the first time I tried.

Every time it has done this, it would be from a cold boot. After I had finally gotten it to boot, I could turn it off, and turn it back on like normal.

It is completely unmodded, with a 250 GB hard drive expansion inside of it. (Yes I tried taking it out, no it did not change anything.)

 

Attached is an example of it red ringing. Error code is 0020, which if my research is correct, it shouldn't be able to just turn back on from.

https://streamable.com/r9yv82

 

Even if I manage to get it up and running again, would it be better just to retire it, and get maybe a 360 slim and mod it? I do not want to open this 360 up to do more than say repasting. Not because I don't have confidence in myself to do so, but because... idk. It feels wrong.

[Fasauceome]

9 minutes ago, m0oble said:

I do not want to open this 360 up to do more than say repasting. Not because I don't have confidence in myself to do so, but because... idk. It feels wrong.

From what I remember, the red ring was caused by excessive mounting pressure of the heat sink onto the CPU/GPU package. I saw a video that was about a fix, (that would have been good to know back in 2007 lol) which added washers onto the spring screws to give the package a bit more breathing room under that super tight heat sink

[m0oble]

9 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

From what I remember, the red ring was caused by excessive mounting pressure of the heat sink onto the CPU/GPU package. I saw a video that was about a fix, (that would have been good to know back in 2007 lol) which added washers onto the spring screws to give the package a bit more breathing room under that super tight heat sink

1. Why would that cause it to red ring on cold boots, but not after hours of use?

2. The E model was released in 2013, so would that video even apply now?

[Kilrah]

The thermal stress causes some solder joints to crack/PCB pads to lift making bad contacts, and the same thermal changes are what makes it work at some temps and not others. Things flex when it gets warm and touch again for a while until they're cooled down.

[Fasauceome]

4 minutes ago, m0oble said:

Why would that cause it to red ring on cold boots, but not after hours of use

The problem came from prolonged temperature shifts and warping of the mainboard. After hours of use, I think that the silicon settles into a sort of "resting" position that alleviates pressure. 

 

4 minutes ago, m0oble said:

The E model was released in 2013, so would that video even apply now?

I think the CPU cooler mounting mechanism was the same but you should double check

[Levent]

Try disassembling the thing and running it see how it behaves when you are turning it on and when it red lights. Honestly speaking, if you havent once replaced the thermal paste or pads, you are probably looking at cracked solder joints at this point.

[Nayr438]

I would just retire it, anything outside of a Reballing the GPU is a temporary fix and even that will eventually fail again unless you want to address the thermal issue which was addressed in the slim models.
 

20 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

From what I remember, the red ring was caused by excessive mounting pressure of the heat sink onto the CPU/GPU package.

Microsoft had talked about it a few years ago saying it was a result of the console constantly heating up and cooling down causing stress on the solder balls eventually leading them to crack.

[m0oble]

Out of curiosity, I left it on (red ring) for like 30 minutes. Turned it off and back on, and it magically turned on. So it is probably something to do with that. Probably just gonna try to use it as much as I can, and at some point either mod or buy a modded 360. (Any suggestions on what model?)

34 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

The thermal stress causes some solder joints to crack/PCB pads to lift making bad contacts, and the same thermal changes are what makes it work at some temps and not others. Things flex when it gets warm and touch again for a while until they're cooled down.

 

[Fasauceome]

14 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

Microsoft had talked about it a few years ago saying it was a result of the console constantly heating up and cooling down causing stress on the solder balls eventually leading them to crack.

yes and that specifically happened because of how tightly the heat sink was mounted right? Cause if it was loosened up the cracking was not a problem, like on the slims

[Alex Atkin UK]

39 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

yes and that specifically happened because of how tightly the heat sink was mounted right? Cause if it was loosened up the cracking was not a problem, like on the slims

Pretty sure no, it was nothing to do with the tightness of the mounting.  What happened is it broke from thermal stress and adjusting the mount was a hack to temporarily get the broken solder joints to make enough contact.

AFAIK you can't really over-tighten the mount on a soldered chip, short of actually cracking the die.  The tighter, the better. 

Those X clamps didn't feel like they put a particularly large amount of pressure on the chip, wouldn't be surprised if its less than we do today with spring mount coolers.  But this is only my opinion.

 

The main reason pressure is an issue today is socketed chips, if you push them too tight then the pins under the CPU will be flattened too much and not make contact with the pads correctly, as they are basically springs with a pin on the end so change position the more pressure you put on them.

[thrasher_565]

hard to remember what is what as both the 360 and ps3 had problems but the fix was to re ball the cpu witch is costly more so then just buying a different system atlest for 360. ps3 are more costly and because of the backwards comparable console they get vary expensive like $1000... but i could be miss remembering it. i no has something to do with heat. thowing more cooling will that help

 

oh the mounting was a red haring and got mix results.

Edited May 12 by thrasher_565

[m0oble]

After playing Madden 11 for like an hour, I can now say that the issue is definitely whatever you all were saying about the flexy thing moving back into place with heat

It played absolutely fine but after letting it cool off it started to red ring again.

 

For the time being, I'm just gonna back up all of my saves, and keep playing on this 360 until it dies (turning it on by letting it sit on a RROD until it heats up enough to reboot) and then when that time comes I will buy a modded 360 or figure out how to mod one (Again, any models you all suggest for modding?)

[Nayr438]

50 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

yes and that specifically happened because of how tightly the heat sink was mounted right? Cause if it was loosened up the cracking was not a problem, like on the slims

No. It was just the stress of the temperature constantly fluctuating. One of the temporary fixes was to increase the pressure of the clamp which could actually result in more damage over time to the board.

[Alex Atkin UK]

6 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

hard to remember what is what as both the 360 and ps3 had problems but the fix was to re ball the cpu

Neither were actually a problem with the solder balls connecting the chip to the board, Xbox it was the connection on the chip itself.

 

 

[thrasher_565]

20 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Neither were actually a problem with the solder balls, it just happened that heating up the board would often temporarily fix the problem.

 

 

thats jsut a video about the history of it. there were multiple problems with it.

there like 3 gens of the consoles, i bleave 2 heat sinks as well the solder problem and bord warping.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkL9hgZazZg

 

and them slim also had problems from the sounds of it...

 

its impossible to relay pinpoint what it is as old videos were just making videos for the hype and there was alot of trolling too like burning a game...

Edited May 13 by thrasher_565

[Alex Atkin UK]

36 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

thats jsut a video about the history of it. there were multiple problems with it.

there like 3 gens of the consoles, i bleave 2 heat sinks as well the solder problem and bord warping.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkL9hgZazZg

 

and them slim also had problems from the sounds of it...

 

its impossible to relay pinpoint what it is as old videos were just making videos for the hype and there was alot of trolling too like burning a game...

Sure, no doubt there were other issues, but the main one was the substrate problem.

 

I even fixed a console myself with the heatsink rework, I think it just altered the pressure on the substrate, temporarily fixing the broken joints.

 

I also recall the later models having the heatpipe coming off the GPU heatsink, to try to avoid it getting as hot to reduce the chance of the problem.  So they definitely glossed over the details.

 

There's at least one good video on YT about the REAL cause of the PS3 yellow light error too, but I forget what exactly the common cause was.

[thrasher_565]

10 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Sure, no doubt there were other issues, but the main one was the substrate problem.

 

I even fixed a console myself with the heatsink rework, I think it just altered the pressure on the substrate, temporarily fixing the broken joints.

 

I also recall the later models having the heatpipe coming off the GPU heatsink, to try to avoid it getting as hot to reduce the chance of the problem.  So they definitely glossed over the details.

 

There's at least one good video on YT about the REAL cause of the PS3 yellow light error too, but I forget what exactly the common cause was.

ya i watch like 40 minute documentary about the ps3 it was good but probably cant find it...

it was talking about the 65nm cpu/gpu and the solder it had between it as the cpu was put on top of the gpu.

 

ya i dont no there so much the could be a problem the thing is a hot box...well all consoles were hot box except Nintendo

 

also people were in to moding there consoles and people would put slower fan in there to make it quiet...like thows blue led ones. (ya i was one about mods...)

 

 

 

maybe this was it?

oh look a 360 video too... well ill watch it

 

 

Edited May 13 by thrasher_565

[Alex Atkin UK]

9 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

ya i watch like 40 minute documentary about the ps3 it was good but probably cant find it...

it was talking about the 65nm cpu/gpu and the solder it had between it as the cpu was put on top of the gpu.

Honestly, I was really nervous about AMD 3D V-Cache after all this, putting RAM on top of the CPU cores.  But there's years of knowledge about how to do it right between.

 

9 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

maybe this was it?

I think it was, basically it seems it was pretty similar to the Xbox 360 problem.

[m0oble]

Okay, new issue, well... not issue?

 

It isn't red ringing anymore. Granted it's only been like 2 days, but after not being on for probably around 40 hours, it boots up fine. Obviously no error code to report so... what gives? Did it just decide to start working again?

[DanteCoal]

On 5/12/2024 at 12:06 PM, Nayr438 said:

I would just retire it, anything outside of a Reballing the GPU is a temporary fix and even that will eventually fail again unless you want to address the thermal issue which was addressed in the slim models.

This is 100% the correct answer.  RRoD was a solder issue.  You can technically re-flow it, but it's not easy, and can damage things further if done wrong.  You can also get it professionally done if you have some odd sentimental attachment, but that would cost more than a replacement console now.

As for your new issue, RRoD is a hit/miss thing.  Once it starts, it'll keep happening over time, then eventually just kill the system entirely.  Gotta either say your goodbyes, or look for a shop that can fix it for you.  (even if fixed, it can happen again, anywhere from a month later, to a decade.  RRoD is just as inevitable as death or taxes.)