Welcome to Valhalla: Inside the New 250GB Xbox 360 Slim
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 18, 2010 1:59 AM ESTPower Consumption: 50% of the Original Xbox 360, and Quieter
Moore’s Law is good for any of three things: 1) increasing performance, 2) adding features, 3) reducing power. Consoles have the benefit of not having to worry about improving performance or adding features over time. There are no changing API specs and games are always designed to the same hardware performance level. This leaves us with improvements in power consumption (and Microsoft’s profitability).
The new Xbox 360 power connector (right). It's slim.
The new power brick isn’t compatible with the old Xbox 360s. At 135W it isn’t enough to power even the Jasper Xbox 360 and thus you get a new power connector. It’s much lighter than the old unit and a bit smaller, but still larger than anything you’d get with a notebook for obvious reasons.
New power brick (left) vs Old power brick (right)
Given my plethora of Xbox 360s I happen to have a good amount of historical data on power consumption for all of the major revisions, I’ve added the relevant Valhalla numbers below.
| Power Consumption Comparison | ||||||||
| Xbox 360 Revision | System Off | Idle | Halo 3 | Rockband 2 | Gears of War 2 | Red Dead Redemption | ||
| Xbox 360 Slim (Valhalla) | 0.6W | 70.4W | 87.0W | 82.7W | 88.0W | 90.4W | ||
| Xbox 360 Late 2008 - 2010 (Jasper) | 2.0W | 93.7W | 105.9W | 101.0W | 105.9W | 109.3W | ||
| Xbox 360 Late 2007 - 2008 (Falcon) | 2.8W | 101.4W | 121.2W | 112.8W | 121.5W | |||
| Xbox 360 2005 - 2007 (Xenon) | 2.3W | 155.7W | 177.8W | 167.7W | 177.1W | |||
The biggest improvement is actually when the system is totally off. The new Xbox 360 slim pulled 0.6W compared to over 2W for the older 360s while doing nothing more than being plugged in. Idle power is roughly 75% of what it was with the Jasper Xbox 360 and load power is around 80 - 83% of what we saw with the previous generation. Note that the new Xbox 360 consumes less than half the power of the original 360!
Idle power consumption is actually not very impressive for a 40nm Xbox 360 if that's indeed what we're looking at. A modern day Core i5 system with an efficient power supply will idle at under 70W with a beefy discrete graphics card. While this is a significant drop compared to previous Xbox iterations, it's not impressive as a computing device.
The savings are tangible however and also result in a cooler, quieter system. The CPU and GPU are now cooled by a single, larger fan that keeps idle noise down to a minimum. I measured noise levels between Valhalla and Jasper at 2” away from the chassis and came up with the numbers below:
| Sound Comparison | ||||
| Xbox 360 Slim (Valhalla) | Xbox 360 Late 2008 - 2010 (Jasper) | |||
| Idle | 45 dB(A) | 50 dB(A) | ||
| Load (Spinning Disc) | 51 dB(A) | 54 dB(A) | ||
The measurements were taken in my office with a noise floor of around 37 dB(A). At idle the new Xbox 360 slim is noticeably quieter, but still audible. The drop in idle noise is perfect for those of you who use the Xbox 360 as a HTPC of sorts. You can still get quieter out of a well designed HTPC however.
While spinning a disc the old Jasper was absurdly loud it is more bearable on the new 360. It’s still not silent (nor can it be while quickly spinning a disc) and you’ll still scratch discs if you move the Xbox 360 while a disc is spinning, but it’s an improvement.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
109 Comments
View All Comments
xboxknow - Saturday, June 19, 2010 - link
Also -- you can see Canada written on the lid -- the early parts are being assembled at IBM's Canadian assembly facility.teknomusik - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
Does the slim still have an infrared signal receiver? I read somewhere that it doesn't, and I wasn't able to tell after looking at all of the pictures here.CityZ - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
It does. You can see it on the motherboard next to the front USB ports.F3N1X85 - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
This is killing me because I cant find an answer to this ANYWHERE so since u looked at it's guts I assume you can answer it.Did they remove the IR receiver?
I use my current xbox as a media device more than an game system. I use a logitech harmony one to turn on my xbox, tv and receiver with one button and control my xbox itself. Now if, god forbid, my 360 red rings I will probably want to get the newer one. But if this new one no longer has an IR sensor then it puts a slight kink in my normal operation methods.
Drakino - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
"I own a total of five Xbox 360s. Four of them have died. Three because of the Red Ring of Death, all out of warranty. Many have had serial Xbox 360 failures, I had them in parallel."Yep. I'm only on my second XBox, with the launch day unit replaced under their extended "oh crap, we built a turd" coverage. While the new system looks slick, I'm not interested in rewarding Microsoft with any more of my money. If my current system fails, I'm going to sell off the games I have. I'll never understand the attraction people have to the 360 with the repeated and widespread failures. I already made an effort to pick up any cross platform game on the PS3 a number of years ago, so the 360 has been seeing less and less use as time goes on. I don't have the time to play every game that comes out, so having just the selection available to the PS3 doesn't bother me.
Vote with your dollar, thats all companies really pay attention to. Stop rewarding Microsoft for failure.
bill4 - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
Yup. It figures, any hate filled rant against the 360 is almost always accompanied by the other shoe dropping, "that's why I love my amazing Playstation 3 (tm)". I was literally just waiting for it as I read through your post.Anyways, you can do what you want, RROD is a dead issue since Jasper what, 3 years ago? I've owned a X360 since launch for 4.5 years, 3 different ones, and had one failure in that time (around a year after launch I think) that was fixed totally free and took less than two weeks turnaround time. Honestly, not that big a deal. That replacement Xbox then worked flawlessly for two years, at which point I voluntarily upgraded to a Jasper elite which has worked flawlessly since then. It's just not even a concern.
Anyways I owned a PS3 (sold it) and that system is just terribly designed in so many ways (small example, I found it super annoying that my PS3 controllers were always out of charge for some reason. Worse, they only give you a exceedingly short recharge cable, another dumb decision, so I had to practically smash my face against the TV glass all the time while charging my PS3 controller. I later randomly read on a forum that the reason is, PS3 by default doesn't shut the controller down with the system, just terrible). I also hate the Ps3 last gen controller, especially for FPS, and PSN and XMB are both just low rent, and I read constant stories of never ending updates and installs and patches on PS3. And PSN download speeds are supposedly terrible, though I really didn't download that much in my time with it.
But in the end it's the games, and I'll take Gears and Halo over Indiana Tomb Raider, I mean Uncharted, etc.
wicko - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
And it never fails that a 360 fanboy has to go into damage control mode and bash the PS3 for reasons that are entirely false. And FYI, I own both consoles currently and will not be selling either one.The controller DOES shutdown when you turn the system off. USB cables are plenty long and it costs maybe a dollar to buy an extra long cable if you need one at monoprice or something. The charge lasts quite a long time even when its telling you the battery is low, it will still last 30 minutes or more. If your controllers were dying it is possible that you have defective controllers or you're doing it wrong.
Controller preference is a matter of opinion. Some people like the PS3 controller, some like the 360 controller. I'd prefer if sony had similar thumbsticks in that they have more resistance when you rotate them, and that the 360 controller didn't have a d-pad you'd expect to see on a 3rd party controller.
PSN and XMB are fine, in fact MS took a page from XMB when they made NXE except they bloated theirs with Ads and useless items/channels. XMB makes a hell of a lot more sense since it's much easier to find different settings and what not, as well as in-game XMB being identical to out of game XMB. Everything is in the same place no matter where you access XMB.
PSN being free also kills any real advantage XBL has, its just a much better deal altogether. And PSN+ makes XBL look ridiculous since you get more than just the ability to play online (which should be free) and early access to demos.
As for PSN downloads, well, they max out my 5mb connection so I can't complain, but I'm sure people with 10-20mb connections aren't getting speeds they're accustomed to. Valid complaint.
As for the games.. well again up to preference, but there is just so much more variety on PS3. Sadly, Halo has gone downhill in my opinion and I hope Reach is a throwback to the first game that I spent so many hours playing. But Uncharted 2 just takes the cake, there aren't many games that can match it. And I laugh at your Indiana Tomb Raider comment, considering Halo = Alients movies. Next time you're going to bash the PS3, at least get some facts behind you.
wicko - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
Sorry, *Aliens movies.chrnochime - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
And the MS fanboy rush out and claim that the PS3 just suck more than the 360. Please the 360 has been fundamentally flawed up to now, and all it took was 5 freakin years of actual production to make the system work as it should've always been.Too short an USB charge cable? Get a freakin' longer USB cable. If you're so well versed in gaming and PC as most gamers are, you should know where to get (cheap) usb cable already. And that crap about FPS on 360 being better than PS3? Please both suck compare to KB + mouse, so don't pretend FPS on 360 is just so fun LOLOL(tm) (tm by the fanboys who else).
And those "constant stories" blah blah blah. If you actually owned one, and didn't experience any of the symptoms, what's your point in bringing them up?
Voluntarily upgrade to Jasper? Why bother when you were so happy with the pre Jasper anyway? Don't tell me you did it NOT because you weren't worried your system could go any time. Wow lots of confidence in your fav company there.
Just so you don't go thinking I'm a Sony fanboy(not that I give a crap what some anonymous poster online think), I own all three systems AND PCs for HTPC and gaming, so I got no bias whatsoever. I just HATE fanboys who keep saying HALO is so damn great when the freakin' controller is just a poor choice of input device for playing FPS.
And that thing about TV *glass*? You mean Plasma screen right? WTH still plays games on CRT anyway Ha
cditty - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link
This was a great article as always. Why don't you get your ad department to find a sponsor to buy a box that you can destroy by taking the heatspreader off, so we can get some inside pics and measurement of the core(s).Put their ad on that page of the article.... It will get some views.