Red Ring of Death Prevention?

Question

Alright, I am an Xbox 360 owner living in fear. Many of my friends have experienced the red ring of death and i am the lucky one. I have tried to keep the area where I store my 360 ventilated. I propped it up ( i store it horizontally) so that the bottom could ventilate. Are there any other measures I should take? And is it caused from motherboard overheating?

And now i dont plan on buying an intercooler I have heard that they make the situation worse by melting the microproccessor and they void the warranty.

I would buy a PS3 if they had any games worth playing. MGS4 is all PS3 has going for it.

Answer 1

Great, you've got it horizontal, ventilated on all sides, no intercooler; perfect! You've obviously done you're research. Yes, the RRoD is often linked to overheating, but can result due to many different problems. Overheating, drive failure, corrupt software (loss of power during system updates).

My advice is to make sure you have a 2yr.+ warranty with the store it was purchased at, this way you would only need to swap it out for a new one at the store should anything happen. Also, if you exchange it you'll have to forfeit your HDD. Don't make the same mistake I did; back up everything via the 512MB Memory Card, or if you have that HDD transfer thing (forget exactly what it's called, retails for around $50.00) you can save it to your PC's HDD. If you've got all this in place you're all set.

Take care and good luck.

Answer 2

I've had my PS3 for almost a year and the last thing on my mind is my console breaking down, I can focus more on just playing games.

There is no way of preventing the Red Ring of Death, you can just delay it from happening, but you may be one of the lucky ones. If a console like the 360, has a high hardware failure rate, it's eventually going to happen no matter what you do to prevent it. The failure rate is 33%, so there are just a small number of people that may not have had the Red Ring of Death, but the majority of people have had the problem.

I recommend this, just sell the Xbox 360 and buy a PS3. Then buy the Xbox 360 again later on in late 2008 or 2009 because by that time possibly Microsoft will have at least fixed the major problems with the console and will ship newer consoles that don't have such a high hardware failure rate.

Answer 3

What you are doing is fine. It should help prolong the life of your Xbox 360. A few more step may include:

1. Playing you xbox 360 for non continous amounts of time
2. try buying an extended warrenty from where you bought it.
3. And if all else fails you can try the rumor about wraping the 360 in a cotton towel. (i personally don't think number three is true though) ;)