Got a troubled relationship going on with an Xbox360 gaming console? You love it due to the fact that you’re insanely hooked to the intense enjoyment that it gives. You really detest it because…um, need I mention the infamous ring of death?
The red ring of death gives many customers a good amount of frustration and hardship. It’s likewise given Microsoft a few problems too…to the tune of about a billion dollars or so in repairing consoles under warrantee. Now the first inquiry that needs asking is why?
What are the main reasons for the ring of death? In a word, it’s called heat. The Xbox gets too hot when it’s played continuously over lengthy time periods.
So how can the Xbox get so overheated? There’s two parts to the explanation here. Firstly, the graphics chip was engineered on a cheap budget by Microsoft.
Rather than go to a highly experienced vendor for its chip design (ASIC vendor), Microsoft designed the graphics chip in house, in other words, on it’s own. This was done in order to save some tens of millions of dollars in the cost of the design. Now, most of us know that to do the job right, you go and hire a professional.
We all know that home made simply won’t work as well as work performed by professionals. Microsoft’s home designed job is very inefficient because it puts out far too much heat. The second part of the overheating issue is that the console’s cooling system is barely adequate at dissipating the enormous heat put out by the graphics chip.
It really doesn’t take a lot to make it get too hot. Try running the unit for any length of time, particularly in a warm room with no air conditioning and it’ll get too hot. The console doesn’t deal well with partial blockage of its cooling vent-holes either.
For example, it is very easy to allow cables and cords to become really clumped up at the back end of the console. This by itself can induce the console to get over heated. Thinking of running it in that cluttered up recess where the midday sunlight will hit it inside that room without air conditioning?
Well, it isn’t a great notion in any case. Of course, you probably don’t treat your toys like this, but what I’m saying here is that consumer products are supposed to be able to take some customer abuse and continue functioning. An issue that I don’t have an answer to is what went wrong with Microsoft’s quality control process?
There must be a product testing program of some kind in place to protect the customer from buying faulty products. Maybe it was deficient because it failed to simulate typical customer use of the console. Or possibly it was ok, but the management people shipped the consoles out anyway?
All conjectures aside, the great news is that Microsoft has gone to an ASIC vendor in the US and had the graphics chip redesigned. Maybe some day your ordinary Xbox gamer won’t know what you are talking of when you mention the red ring of death.