Lifting The Covers

On the old 360 you at least had a removable face plate and some insight into what was going on at the rear of the system. This time around you can only look in at the sides which makes this next part quite frustrating.

Thankfully I know exactly how many clips you have to break free: three on the back and eight on the front.

I started on the back, got the clips loose then moved to the front. You need to access clips at both the left and ride side of the Xbox 360. A flashlight can be very handy here. Remember you’ve got clips at both the top and the bottom of the Xbox to work free at the front. Unfortunately during the process I managed to snap a few of these clips, not to the point where the system couldn’t be put back together thankfully.

The only advice I can give you here is to be patient, persistent and have a good flathead screwdriver at your side. Once you’ve pried these clips free the front will separate from the rest of the system. If you’re trying to do it without breaking any clips, good luck, if you don’t mind then be prepared to put some force into the process.

Be careful when removing the front of the system. There’s a ribbon cable that connects the 360‘s power button to the rest of the system, you have to remove it before you can proceed. In my original teardown the ribbon cable just ripped right out of its connector without any problems so if this happens to you, you should be ok.


The ribbon connector attaches here

With the front removed, separate the clips on the back and the top cover of the 360’s should lift right off exposing what we have below:

From this point on you’ll need your T8 bit. Start by removing the two screws that hold the front panel PCB in place. With the screws removed the PCB pulls straight out:

Now look at the side of the Xbox with the white sticker on it, there are 12 x T8 screws that you need to remove here to take the whole thing apart. If you just want to get the cover off I believe you only need to remove the 5 black ones.

The 12th screw is actually hidden under the white Xbox 360 sticker. It looks like Microsoft has done a lot to figure out whether or not you’ve opened this thing. Modders don’t make Microsoft happy. RRoD didn’t make me happy. Modders ftw.

Getting Inside the new Xbox 360 The DVD Drive and HDD Carrier
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  • kratos4u - Saturday, July 3, 2010 - link

    xbox 360 console sells high = pirated copies

    if MS take measures to stops piracy 100% = sales down

    torrent = xbox 360 sales.

    any 1 agree

    sorry xbox 360 fanboys
  • evilowner - Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - link

    ur logic is flawed big time any type of data is torrent..... before u target 1 thing plz do alittle research PS3 GAMEES ? also ? 0_o moives? music? programs etc do i need to keeping typing dump little kid.... torrents is to lower prices so ur not paying 150 for ur low quality data.... torrents keep prices in check... period.
  • viocosi - Thursday, July 8, 2010 - link

    In the new xbox 360 slim is possible to use the iXtreme firmware?
  • fiftey - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link

    As the article shows, there are minor improvements in power consumption and noise levels with the larger single fan, but I don't care about noise levels. The issue I have is does this fan provide sufficient cooling? With lots of people complaining on amazon.com that their brand new Xbox 360 S is already red-lighting and breaking down, I wonder whether microsoft have messed up again by focusing too hard on lowering noise levels by using a larger fan and lowering fan speeds and not providing sufficient cooling for the singular, larger heatsink.

    I'd like to see some comparison data on the operating temperatures of the valhalla and jasper and if the new xbox is indeed still running hot, a step by step tutorial of how users can simply mod their new 360s so that the fan is always at max speed
  • tipoo - Thursday, July 14, 2011 - link

    AFAIK the failure rates of the new slims are below 1% (don't remember the source) vs above 30 for the original. All electronics have a certain failure rate, below 1% is good enough for me.
  • draco2210 - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - link

    anyone heard any news or updates about flashing the new DG-16D4S drives yet?
  • pfeifer220 - Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - link

    I lost the connector and power brick to my new 360 slim, does anybody know where or how I can purchase just these 2 items alone?
  • butanebob - Thursday, July 29, 2010 - link

    "Needless to say, I wasn’t terribly happy about purchasing a sixth Xbox 360, but here it is:"

    People like you are the reason the RROD was even an issue. No wonder microsoft didn't bother sorting it out 5 years ago....
  • walkerfsu18 - Monday, August 2, 2010 - link

    i have the 360 slim but on it i hate how its the same as ps3,there are these white spots i just cant get off,i tried everything,any ideas?
  • evilowner - Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - link

    1st off why argue over a shitie disk? dvd n blue-ray both fucking suck peroid. MY HARD DRIVE..... yea i said it..... the hard drive loads and stores way more than both of those n are both garbage. my hard drive loads a million times fast than both of them : P so any type of dvd isnt the future its ur hard drive......... 1 it loads a million times faster. 2 . it holds way more... uhhh terabyte hard drives.... come on.... why would i want a dvd or a blue ray disk?? yup i wouldnt..... they shouldnt even make disks anymore..... when u can dl the game to the hard drive n be done with it n never ever have to buy the game again..... or movie or even music..... enought is said, if u dont get it...sigh.... than u will never know how close to the future u truely are, n should go back into ur cave. ty. peace !

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