Inside Microsoft's Xbox 360
by Anand Lal Shimpi, Kristopher Kubicki & Tuan Nguyen on November 16, 2005 5:09 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Removing the Heatsinks from the Motherboard
Removing the heatsinks from the GPU and the CPU will require a great deal of patience as to avoid damaging the motherboard. Flip over the Xbox 360's motherboard. You will see two X clamps grasping the ends of the screws that hold the heatsinks into place. Without removing the X clamps, you cannot remove the heatsinks. Microsoft has done a clever job in terms of securing the unit from prying eyes and removing the heatsinks from the Xbox 360 can be a trick for a lot of people.
Take a pair of small pliers and gently pry off each corner of the clamps. After two corners have been lifted, the rest of the clamp springs loose and can easily be removed by hand. Once both X plates have been removed, you can turn the motherboard over and simply pull the heatsinks off to reveal the GPUs (two dice on the chip) and CPUs (single die, 3 cores on the chip).
You now have a fully disassembled Xbox 360.
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DrZoidberg - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
Aww.. u guys shouldnt say that. Now it doesnt sound that amazing anymore.
24 pipe x800 doesnt sound as good as 48 pipe x1800xt.
Still great work disassembling console. It looks like it takes a while to disassemble it. Would this mean it would be hard to mod xbox360?
jkostans - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
Well if a 700MHz P3 with 64mb ram and a geforce 4 can run doom 3 then imagine what you can do with mid-range hardware today. There is a lot of processing power in that box, especially for the price. I mean yeah a high-end PC is more powerful, but that's the way it's always been. I'm not a console person, mostly because I like shooters and a mouse/keyboard is completely necessary. Did microsoft change their policy towards keyboards and mice? I would love to lay the smack down on my friends in halo, but gamepads suck! Also whatever happened to the console being able to play with a pc over the internet? Didn't dreamcast have something like that?coldpower27 - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
Heh, they should say that if the computational power of each pipeline is inferior to the dedicated Pixel/Vertex Pipes used in the R520. They are more versatile in the fact that they can execute both pixel/vertex shaders, but in exchange for that versatility each pipe is made more simple, and there are more of them over conventional GPU's.CZroe - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
Why didn't they take apart the HDD unit's enclosure? Wouldn't be any less interesting. I'd sure like to know what brand, size and interface it uses. True capacity?DRavisher - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
Have I understood correctly that the GPU and CPU share a 22.4GB/s 512MiB memory? Isn't that kind of low compared to PC graphics?Pythias - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
Nope. Its on par with low/midrange. But they be making games with it for years to come. Unlike the current flavor of the month gpu.
Slaimus - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
The article says the chip has the processing power of a 24-pipeline R420, but only about 1/3 of its memory bandwith. Although you do have to keep in mind the bandwith that does not get wasted on AA thanks to the daughter chip.lexmark - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
with the tedious security features, i wonder how many people will bother modding with the new $399 version...BigandSlimey - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
Looking at the internal shots it highlights the huge area taken up by the DVD drive, I wonder if they used laptop DVD drive tech, they could've made the console much smaller.tuteja1986 - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link
yeah... but then we would get a crappy laser that would die !