Welcome to Valhalla: Inside the New 250GB Xbox 360 Slim
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 18, 2010 1:59 AM ESTLifting 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.
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mczak - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
is still disappointing imho, at idle. Sure standby power is much lower, but that's just because it is required by law, so if you're surprised by this, don't be, EU regulation requires standby power below 1W nowadays (and less than 0.5W standby power in 2 years). There's no law though requiring to implement reasonable power management when devices are running, and unfortunately it shows. Apparently none of the current consoles have any power management worth speaking of, it's not required by law, it's not a selling argument, so the companies just don't bother at all. Seeing how power management actually takes an effort to get to work (usually riddled with bugs ranging from hardware clock gating issues up to software timers) this isn't terribly surprising, but maybe one day it will be a selling argument, since apparently at least in the pc world all cpus and gpus finally implement it...jigglywiggly - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
No you cannot connect any random dvd drive, they are tied to the motherboard.You can spoof them though.
IceCold12 - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
#1. Why did Anandtech deliberately hide the fact that they used a very old Power supply to exaggerate the size differences between the newer Vallhalla Slim Kinetic 360 power supply? Most likely embargo from Microsoft??#2. Why no direct tests vs an newer Elite Jasper running a game from the HDD vs a new slim Kinetic running a game from the HDD. Why? because there is most likely no difference at all.
Way to ruin your rep AnAndtuch
So what embargos or restrictions did Microsoft put on you guys at Anantech?
Or are you guys now taking money in order to leave certain things out of your reviews??
We need to investigate Ananatechs behaviors, looks to me like they are no longer impartial or a credible source of reliable information.
This story goes deeper.
bigben - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
yeah. and anand is illuminati.NWO.
watch out.
seriously, though, nice article.
XboxMySocks - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
Are you fucking simple? What did you want anand to compare the new PSU to? A kitten? Comparing the new one to the old one is very comprehensive, shut your face.sdfdsfs - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
I'm guessing cost more than anything else, this thing has to be as cheap as possible in order to turn a profit.sdfdsfs - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
sing cost more than anything else, this thing has to be as cheap as possible in order to turn a profit.sdfdsfs - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
on not to use a slim DVDsdfdsfs - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
d tests were done with a spinning discTEAMSWITCHER - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
How can you keep a straight face talking about XBox 360 when 4 of 5 have died. I really can't understand why this isn't the biggest scandal in the tech world. This hardware has the worst track record in the history of electronics. I can see maybe buying a second one to replace the first, but a third, a fourth, a fifth! That's insanity!