Rant of the Day, the XBOX RROD!

Discussion in 'The Lounge - Off Topic' started by millsie, Mar 16, 2011.

  1. millsie

    millsie Byte Poster

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    Need to let off some steam, so here goes!

    I HATE THE MICROSOFT XBOX 360!
    Its ruined my new found love of gaming which has taken a long time to come back. So, I bought a first generation 360 from a mate at work who offered it for 50 quid, bargain I thought, he told me it was broken before but he fixed it so obviously I took the risk.

    But little did I know how much heartache it would give me, not knowing about this inherent problem the 1st gen version had of the dreaded RROD!!

    So here I am only 3 months into my new gaming life, tearing out what little hair I have left over some stupid games that I cant complete because of Microsoft's hasty need to beat Sony to the crown of the king of new gaming 5/6 years ago. I HATE MICROSOFT!

    How pathetic can it be that the heatsinks you put on a top gaming system are not good enough to cool the chips they are supposed to. Imagine if a company who make PC's did this, there'd be uproar! I personally think it was to save money. As for the stupid idea of using cross braces to secure the mother board and the chips getting so hot that the thermal paste melts all over the place, I am at a loss to describe how rubbish the actual machine is in terms of quality.

    I had the machine apart several times, trying all the fixes on the internet I could find, but oh no, it may fix it temporarily but then goes down again right in the middle of a good point in a game, safe to say, I am very upset today and Gates can kiss my a**!!!
    :twisted:
     
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  2. Notes_Bloke

    Notes_Bloke Terabyte Poster

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    I feel your pain mate!

    I had a first gen Xbox 360 that suffered the RROD. It started to crash about half way through Dead Space, and as I got almost to the end it completely packed in.

    Managed to fix it using one of the repair kits from ebay - but it only lasted about another month before it packed up again. Still it lasted long enough to finish Dead Space :D

    NB
     
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  3. alexdc12

    alexdc12 Kilobyte Poster

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    Buy a new one :D

    I had to pay microsoft £80 to fix mine it wasnt RROD tho think its was E74 or summin was overheating tho.
    They picked it up fixed it and sent it back with a years warranty and a some xbox live time
     
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  4. millsie

    millsie Byte Poster

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    Yep, think i'm fighting a losing battle, nightmare!

    I found something else online which suggested replacing the thermal paste with some arctic 5 paste and then taping the GPU and CPU heatsinks to the fan shroud. Might give that one last attempt, if that doesnt work then its to the XBOX grave it goes! 50 quid for 3 months gaming, not bad I suppose:p
     
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  5. Fergal1982

    Fergal1982 Petabyte Poster

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    Funny, I bought a first gen Xbox and never once had an RROD on it. Now upgraded to the S, and still not had any issues so far.
     
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  6. Apexes

    Apexes Gigabyte Poster

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    I've had a first gen xbox for a few years, never had an issue - eventually bought a new one before i came out to berlin, got it here with me and it's all good.

    But, you always take a risk with anything if you buy it used
     
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  7. Phoenix
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    Phoenix 53656e696f7220 4d6f64

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    yup no issues here
    that said i dont leave it on like its a pc, and i dont play games on it 20 hours a day :)
     
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  8. quuuaid

    quuuaid Nibble Poster

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    I bought a second-hand, refurbished one off a mate a few years back and got RROD after about a year and a half.

    Rather than buy the new slimline I replaced it with the new bog standard LIVE package with no HDD for a little over £100 and just slapped the old HDD on the new unit. That way I was able to carry on with my old saves with minimal hassle\expense. No further probs so far... :eek:

    I think it helps that I mainly play Reach on it which is saved to the HDD and means the ODD isn't getting beasted all the time. The beginning-of-the-end for the refurbished one was disk-read problems & I know a lot of other peeps' xboxes went the same way...
     
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  9. millsie

    millsie Byte Poster

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    Cheers all for your comments, makes me feel better!
    Anyways, quuuaid, if I could get a new box for £100 i'd probably go for it, but the cheapest new box I can find at the moment is around £149, if I'm gonna pay that I may aswell get a PS3 and have done with it, you get a much better package and system for an extra £100. I'm not sure i'm very happy with the whole xbox thing still after all these years!
     
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  10. zxspectrum

    zxspectrum Terabyte Poster Forum Leader Gold Member

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    I had the RROD as you have mentioned and my xbox was also second hand. I took mine to a local shop to see how much it was going to cost me, but the bloke said, that if i contacted microsft then they woul pick it up, fix it and deliver it back tio me for free. Anyway i rang the number and no word of a lie, thats what happened, and it took only 2 weeks to fix and get back to me.

    I dont have the xbox anymore as i got rid for an elite one etc, which ive had no problems with, and i do play a lot of modernwarfare

    Ed
     
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  11. Theprof

    Theprof Petabyte Poster

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    After about 3 years, mine also got the RROD. Tried a bunch of things and it pretty much rendered useless... Oh well, what can I say. I still have a PS3 so no complaints here.
     
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  12. Len

    Len Byte Poster

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    I can sell you my Xbox 360 Pro if you like. Hasn't had any problems and I've had it since Nov. 2008.. Selling because my parents bought me the new slim version for Christmas.
     
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  13. millsie

    millsie Byte Poster

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    PM me with cost etc
     
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  14. greenbrucelee
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    greenbrucelee Zettabyte Poster

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    I had four of them before I decided to build a gaming PC.

    The PS3 also suffers issues like the 360. The problem is that they try to make them small and therfore the cooling isn't sufficent enough and so they overheat.

    I don't care that my pc is big and can be quite noisy (although I can turn the fans down) I would rather it was cooling the components inside rather than cooking them. :D

    The next time MS or Sony decide to build compact consoles they need to develop a water cooling system that can be easily changed. Maybe have the resevoir on the back of the console that has a release tap and a bit for filling it.
     
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  15. quuuaid

    quuuaid Nibble Poster

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    But how would you get by without Halo?!? :ohmy:biggrin The Xbox Arcade package is around £120, but you'd need your old HDD

    I agree, it's way better (and not to mention rewarding) to build your own rig and OC it. I just need the funds to slap a good graphics card in mine & I've got a strong feeling the Xbox usage will quickly decline. I'm pretty certain I'll go for the MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti OC Twin FrozR II 1024MB. Looks like one of the best performers in it's price range. Hoping to get this sorted in time for Crysis 2 and Diablo III!
     
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  16. Apoc220

    Apoc220 Byte Poster

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    True story:

    Bought an XBOX 360 off ebay on a whim (earlier generations). Used it for two years (give or take for time on military deployments and it being hauled across the world) and it held up like a champ. After the second time I shipped it I plugged it in and had just bought rockband 2, and the first time I bring it up I get a RROD! I bought the kit off ebay and this seems to have fixed the issue for a bit, but a few months later it started happening again. Upon reading some stuff online it appears that after you apply the fix it is highly recommended that you get an auxilary fan to keep the system cool by pumping the air out of the console. Bought one and it worked fine for a bit, but was still flaky.

    Fast forward I buy a used PS3 (older) and upon arrival from the store, it overheats within MINUTES of me bringing it in. Ended up having to buy a new PS3 slim. This was sometime July of last year, and it was almost impossible to find a slim. There was a shortage at the time, and I was lucky to find the one I did. You couldn't find the things anywhere! Anyway, it ran like a champ and I have not had any issues. It's sitting in storage in the states right now. Sadly I'll have to sell it because I don't have an HDTV and I'm in Australia now and have good ol' PAL standards over here. Good times!
     
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  17. Shinigami

    Shinigami Megabyte Poster

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    I don't think I would really trust the average end-user or gamer with "maintenance" tasks on their consoles (like refilling a water reservoir).

    It's the same reason why we have technicians for performing maintenance on our cars if we're not up to snuff (and here we're more likely to pay for the benefit anyway since a vehicle generally costs more than a console to begin with).

    I have two 360's at home, an older model which still surprisingly works but hasn't been used for a while (it's also not from the very first batch of consoles released... I think I bought mine roughly a year after the 360 was first released), and a brand new slimmer one which is considerably quieter than the old one, and my current console of choice coupled with Kinect.

    I'm however more of a PC gamer (FPS gamer), so the 360's don't get a massive workout...

    Unfortunately, when the manufacturing process tried to go ecological and got rid of lead based soldering, the material used in the early 360's simply could not stand up to the repeated heat related expansion and shrinkage of the CPU. In the end it seemingly pops off (losing connection with the motherboard) and that's where the RROD issue then sprang up.

    I do not know everything about the 360, but I believe the assembly of the console was not done in-house at Microsoft, but handed over to a third party. What I do think, is that the XBOX team imposed several things (such as the general hardware design including the CPU, GPU, and other standards for the components being used) as well as the use of more environmentally friendly manufacturing procedures. But I don't know if getting rid of the lead based soldering was an idea that came from Microsoft, or from the company building the 360's in bulk (and Microsoft, being primarily a software company, probably does not have the kind of hardware technicians on its payroll that would know everything about the different grades of soldering materials and how to affix a CPU to a motherboard... but this is only a guess on my part).

    In any case, it was a rather poor oversight and the fixes which followed did not do justice in eliminating this problem from subsequent revisions of the console (until very late into the 360's lifecycle). Whilst free fixes/extended warranties were applied in many cases, I think the response to the overall incident and handling of it, was a difficult one to resolve and ended up costing Microsoft quite a bit of money. I know we wouldn't want a repeat of this situations, it's an expensive lesson to learn and whatever console comes out next will hopefully maintain a higher level of quality throughout to avoid such inconveniences for the gamers out there.
     
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  18. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    Had 360's since they first came out, falcon, condor or what ever I forget the motherboards now. I'm on my 3rd due to faults. Current one touch wood is fine. From my own experiences I'd never buy a repaired 360 because the same thing happened to the 360's I fixed myself. They worked for a time. My current 360 is the older model so when the warranty run out I fitted 2 extra fans inside it because I figured if this one goes thats my 360 career over! Although I am tempted to get a 250GB slim :S

    I've been into my PS3 a lot lately. I'm not into the which is better arguments, just buy one of each I say!
     
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  19. onoski

    onoski Terabyte Poster

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    The X-box 360 and the PS3 do have their faults, however only got a PS2 and just over a year got a PS3 which developed a fault with the blu ray laser lens. This is taking into account I bearly even switch the PS3 on let alone play games on it.

    I believe both consoles suffer from performance glitch when playing games like MGS4 etc as that's when my PS3 crashed and blu ray laser gave up the ghost.

    Well I have since both a second hand blu ray laser drive and been playing blu ray movies and dead space on it without a glitch.

    By the way it's a PS3 slim, but can't compare it with the PS2 which is solid runs for hours and still good to go.
     
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  20. greenbrucelee
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    If you can, save up a little bit more cash and go for the MSI 580. what a weapon. I have seen it action running crysis, world in conflict and Operatin flashpoint dragon rising with maxed out resolution full AA and the whole works and it ran like a dream.
     
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