Tools

iFixit’s Red Ring of Death Fix Kit

Picture this scenario: you’re deep into the seventh hour of a Halo tournament when your Xbox 360 suddenly shuts off. You turn it on again and are greeted by the most unfriendly of messages — a ring of lights, once happy and green, is now red. Since your Xbox 360 is out of warranty, what can you do? (Hint: we can help!)

Xbox 360 motherboard
No wonder it has cooling issues—look at all that thermal paste!

The red ring of death (RROD) failure is most common on early Xbox 360 models due to their inadequate cooling system. As the console heats up, the motherboard warps slightly near the largest source of heat — the processors. The X-clamps that are used to hold the heat sinks against the processors do not provide enough clamping force, so after many heat cycles the processors desolder themselves from the motherboard. The GPU is most vulnerable to warping due to its large footprint and the demand placed upon it by graphics-intensive video games.

Xbox 360 motherboard
Installing the all-important heat sink machine screws

iFixit’s Red Ring of Death Fix Kit solves the problem of desoldering chips by eliminating the X-clamps altogether. Instead, the heat sinks are secured to the motherboard by machine screws to provide a firmer-than-factory clamp on both processors. Highly conductive Arctic Silver Ceramique thermal paste is included in the kit to replace Microsoft’s poorly applied factory thermal paste. In addition, we’ve added small stick-on heat sinks to protect two small integrated circuits on the board from future failure caused by thermal cycling, as well as high quality thermal pads to protect the RAM chips on the underside of the motherboard. The kit includes all the tools you’ll need to access and remove your toasty motherboard, as well as the ones you’ll need to install the all-important heat sink machine screws. As a cherry on top, we’ve created an install guide to take the guesswork out of fixing your Xbox 360.

Xbox 360 Red ring of death fix kit
Contents of iFixit’s Red Ring of Death fix kit

You may also want to consider installing the kit on your Xbox 360 if it’s out of warranty, even if it doesn’t have the dreaded RROD lights on it yet. Xbox 360 failure rates are estimated to be anywhere between 23% and 54%, so chances are quite high that your Xbox will develop the RROD at some point in its life. Our kit allows you to take a preemptive strike on the RROD and ensure a long and happy life for your console.

Purchase the sweet iFixit Xbox 360 RROD Kit for just $29.95!