The title basically covers my problem: my xbox keeps overheating. It happens generally after one hour of playing. However, when I put it on its side, it already happened after 15 minutes. I think it has to do with the xbox itself, maybe there's too much dust inside, but I'm just posting this thread in case one of you knows about this stuff and/or has had the same issue in the past.
Vacuum the vents. My xbox used overheat all the time, until I just picked up the hoover and sucked all the dust out. Failing that you could also take it apart and vacuum each area where the air goes through, or just blast the whole thing with a bottle of air.
Also, Xbox Support once told me that Xboxes as they get older start to work much better when horizontal instead of vertical. I've experienced that for sure.
surround it with a fort of icepacks. you don't want them to touch the box though obviously, so what you do is you create a wall of them surrounding it all on sides, but not above or below.
I would presume taking it all apart to inject air into would void the warranty too? If it's close to death you might as well try your best to fix it.
Definitely. It seems there's more exposed areas for ventilation this way with the bottom grey part exposed.
if its in a cabinet of something like a cable box holder, then take it out. Or put a fan near it to keep it cool.
If an xbox is overheating, it most likely means that the heatsink isn't properly attached to the motherboard. This will cause the xbox to overheat. If you want to fix this problem, you have to open your xbox. **** the warranty- it's useless. I have done this with my xbox, it's really easy to open and ****. Umm, you might need thermal paste of some sort too. In the end, you're better off buying a new xbox because there's no telling if it will **** up again.
I keep a fan near mine and I haven't had any problems since I put that there, also people stand their Xbox's up vertically?
Put ice packs around your Xbox. Don't make the ice packs touch the Xbox. Only put the ice packs on the sides not the top and bottom.
I found putting an grate of the sort you put hot plates on to cool helped. That essentially makes it float and the airflow under it makes a big difference. That kept my original one alive for five years until someone closed the door to the cabinet it was in and fell asleep so it proceeded to run for 14 hours with no ventilation. Red ring the next day.
This assumes two things, A. He has money to spend B. The problem is more serious than simply overheating occasionally If both those are true, then yes, buy a new xbox. Otherwise it's a waste of money to fix a problem that could be fixed a plethora of other ways as mentioned in this thread.
Disagree. Dust build up is much more likely than a heat sink issue, even with the crappy build quality of Xbox 360s. Try hoovering or compressed air, but (as others have said) avoid anything too high power. This is because it makes the fans spin, turning them in to a dynamo which sends electricity back along the circuit with the potential for damage, and as I understand it 360s don't have any protection against this (I could well be wrong, but I take a better safe than sorry approach to this). What's the point in buying a new box before this one's definitely dead? Unless he's gonna be in a time critical situation where it might die and he'll need one before he can go out to buy another one then just wait, it'd be a waste of money otherwise. EDIT: Though if it is out of warranty then open that sucker up. There are plenty of videos on how to do it, I've done it multiple times and it's not too difficult (just make a little diagram of which screws go where, my only advice here). It'll let you see the problem and if it's dust then it'll be much easier to clean when it's open (plus you don't have to worry about hurting the fans then, just don't blow air through them), and if it's not dust then Eightball is most likely right and it's a heat sink issue. If you're not too comfortable removing the heat sink (actually pretty easy, though I can understand why some people aren't too keen on it) then try to find a friend who knows about fixing or building desktop PCs, the setup is pretty much the same, and they'll likely have some thermal paste lying around anyway.
Stick a paperclip in to jam the fan. That'll reduce airflow slightly but you can use a stronger vac to fix that. protip: keep a piece of paper nearby when opening this up and stick the screws through the paper to keep them orderly and not lost.
Now that's ****ing genius. Gonna be useful when I'm doing similar things with PCs, I thank you sir. Yeah totally, this is precisely what I do. Good way to get screws in the right place and also avoid losing them.