Spanish modder finds creative way to cool his Xbox 360

A poster at a Spanish modding forum called “El otro lado” has gutted his Xbox 360 console in an effort to prevent the dreaded Three Lights of Death, or The Red Ring of Death (RROD) as others know it.

In case you haven’t heard of this phenomenon, it basically is a harbinger of doom for any Xbox 360 console. Three red lights appear forming a ring around the console’s power button informing you of its demise. Some people say it happens when some components melt inside the Xbox. Others say it’s just that the processor overheats. Many versions have circulated the web but the main point is that these failures have been so common that Xbox owners have developed any number of fixes for the problem. Recently a boy got electrocuted while submerging his console’s power brick in water in an effort to cool it down and keep on playing.

What this modder did was cut one side of the console open and attach two huge PC fans to the motherboard just over the processor and as a final touch he added a temperature gauge using an LCD display. According to him, the mod cost him 60 Euros and that’s going to rid his console of the Ring of Death.

Aside from his Xbox looking like a bomb from a Die Hard movie, it might prove to work and I really hope he never sees those lights. I’ve had friends who’ve seen the lights even after having a fan next to the console so maybe it’s some other type of flaw that’s just unavoidable in some cases. In my case I decided to just keep on playing.

When my Xbox died I went through the process of replacing it, but for me, aside from having a $400 dollar machine become a paperweight, it really wasn’t much of a pain. I had to move as far as my front door to deliver my busted Xbox and I just waited about four days to get a new one. I’m not excusing Microsoft in any way, the console has a serious flaw, but I was pleasantly surprised by the replacement process of my Xbox. Of course I would curse out loud if it happens again but I would rather wait ten days than attempting some weird fix I found on-line.

I don’t get why some people would risk electrocution rather than stop playing for a couple of days but I guess it’s just part of being a gamer. In the old days we used to blow our lungs out into the NES to keep it working so maybe this is the modern equivalent to that. As consoles evolve, gamers have to become more resourceful and come up with fancier and sometimes riskier solutions so maybe we will be seeing much more of this. I guess in this age, as sad as it is, blowing into the console just won’t cut it anymore.

Read[Xboxer] And for the mod [Elotrolado* ]

NOTE: *The webpage is in Spanish, but the images show the process