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The Xbox 360 can be the gamers best friend, it can give him many hours of intense and addictive fun. But as many users know, the Xbox can also deal out pain in the form of the red ring of death. This error indicates a general hardware failure. Exactly why does this happen? It turns out that the Xbox has a number of design flaws or weaknesses that combine together to cause the red ring of death failure mode. These flaws are discussed below. 1) Heat - The Xbox design has a lot of high powered components that are crammed into a small space. Just as large engines put out lots of heat, these high powered components also create a great deal of heat. The Xbox design uses fans, vents, and heat sinks to keep the console cool. Because there isn't much of a reserve cooling capacity, this system will easily overheat if the airflow into the console gets obstructed. When the temperatures get hot enough, the heat starts to affect different design flaws (discussed below) which cause the ring of death failure. 2) Lead free solder - Microsoft uses lead free solder in the Xbox in order to avoid the use of lead in products used by children. Lead free solder is very brittle. In addition, the wrong type of lead free solder was chosen by Microsoft, a type that with long term exposure to heat tends to get very brittle. Hair-line cracks will form when this brittle solder is stressed. The cracks result in a weak solder joint that easily breaks and can block the flow of electrical current. 3) Flawed heat sink clamp design - The X clamp is a poor design because the clamp presses down with a non-uniform force. There is a plastic spacer at the X clamp's center that exerts a lot of force on the motherboard at one tiny spot. When the CPU and GPU heat up, this pressure increases, causing the motherboard to flex. Brittle, lead free solder joints become stressed when the motherboard flexes. With enough exposure to these stresses, the solder joints eventually fail. 4) Left over foil on the heat sink - On a some of it's units, Microsoft forgot to remove some foil on the heat sink. This foil has been the cause of many ring of death failures. Don't forget to reapply the thermal compound if you take off the foil. So now you know the "why" behind the red ring of death. Although this knowledge is no substitute for actually playing games, it should help you to evaluate the various Xbox repair guides out there. Remember, if your Xbox was never opened before, it should still be under a warranty and you can send it away to Microsoft for repair.
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Marc Sandford is a gaming addict and writer. Get more Xbox trouble shooting advice about fixing the Red Ring of Death.
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