Xbox Updates

After a few hours of contemplation, I have decided that I am going to take my Xbox mod to the next level. Since this mod has only been done a couple of times (to my knowledge), this seems like an appropriate endeavor. Not only will I be water cooling my Xbox, I am also going to build it into a Husky tool case, with a 20" LCD monitor, water cooling (of course), and maybe a keyboard. For this mod I will be implementing many of the same techniques as Ben Heck, who is in my book, a modding genius. If you are interested in other game system mods, and an amazing Xbox 360 laptop, check him out at http://benheck.com/.

Also my last post explains my reasons for doing this mod and some terminology that may be helpful to know.

So now lets start off with some of my goals for this project. My over all goal for this project is to have a working Xbox laptop/mobile case. The Xbox will be water cooled and integrated into a Husky metal tool case with speakers, a 20" monitor and maybe a keyboard if it will fit. So what are we waiting for?! Lets go!


>>Xbox Mobile V1.0: Part 1<<


After much indecisiveness on whether or not I was going to take my Xbox apart, I finally made the decision to modify my beloved Xbox 360. To start off I brought my Xbox down into my basement workshop and began to gather my main materials. For basic materials I used an Xbox 360, an XSPC Xbox water block, and a CoolIt Domino ALC Liquid Cooling system.


Next I proceeded by disassembling my Xbox (for this project I wont show the disassembly process. If you don't know how to take your Xbox apart here is a good guide http://llamma.com/xbox360/repair/Xbox-360-Disassembly.htm).

The Xbox after disassembly

After removing the two case halves, the motherboard was revealed.

Then I proceeded by removing the disk drive, fan duct, and fan from the metal case. All that was left was the main board.

Now that the Xbox had been stripped of its main components, I then began to remove the heatsinks from the GPU and CPU. Here is a picture of what the CPU and GPU looked like after removing the heat sinks.

I have alot of thermal paste to remove...

In order to remove the old thermal paste, I used rubbing alcohol, some Qtips and alot of patience. Because the thermal paste was old and had under gone many temperature changes, it was hard and gummy, so I dabbed the rubbing alcohol onto the old thermal paste and let it sit for a while.

In the mean time, I picked up a pack of Thermaltake Copper Memory Heatsinks, and applied them to the surrounding chips. These heatsinks will hopefully disperse even more heat.

Nice!

After applying heatsinks to all the large chips I moved back to the cleaning process at hand. I kept reapplying the alcohol when it had evaporated, until I felt a change in consistency of the paste. When I felt that I had soaked the thermal paste in the alcohol long enough, I then moved on to using Qtips and paper towel to smear off the paste.

Almost done!

Finnaly after 3o minutes of work, I had succeded in cleaing off most if not all of the old thermal paste.

Its so shiny!!!!!

Now that all the thermal paste had been removed, I grabbed my recently purchased tube of Arctic MX-3 Thermal Compound, and began to apply it to the freshly cleaned chips.

Oops! Applied a little too much thermal paste!

I then grabbed my XSPC water block and screws, and positioned them on the mother board (I found that it was easier to attach the water block when holding it sideways so as not to smudge the thermal paste).

After a long and uncomfortable 10 minutes, I had finnaly attached the water block to the mother board (yay!). Now time to take a break after a long day...

All done!

Next we will be focusing on the water cooling system so stay tuned!

>>End of part 1<<