Xbox 360 water cooling tutorial

posted Apr 16th 2006 1:15am by Eliot Phillips
filed under: xbox hacks

360

One of the most amazing things about the Xbox 360 isn’t the graphics or the high price; it’s how much heat the thing puts out. Hot air pours out of the machine and I’ve often considered turning mine into and Easy-Bake convection oven. People have been modifying the boxes since their initial release and xboxexpert, on xbox-scene, decided to put together a guide to help out anyone seeking to watercool their Xbox 360. From the text it sounds like he didn’t even play the thing once he got it from the store, the first thing he did was pull it apart. His setup uses Coolance GPU water blocks and a Thermaltake cooling system powered from the DVD drive 12V line.

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Comments [23]

Reader Comments

hehe first comment.
This is quite nice, I always feared getting a nasty burn from the xbox.

Posted at 1:24 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by dakota killpack

well that’s definitely not overkill

Posted at 1:41 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by andrew

Here is another liquid cooled 360 that isn’t tethered to a cinderblock sized radiator. http://watercooling.50webs.com/1/

Posted at 3:40 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by jason

Oh wow, I can copy HardOCP too…

Posted at 3:41 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by lolersticks

I am xboxexpert and you guys can foward any questions/comments/complaints to xboxexpert@mail.com or type them in the topic over at xbox-scene (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=503652)

Posted at 4:51 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by xboxexpert

wicked nice little mod, gotta mate whos gonna give it a go

Posted at 6:22 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by Kyle

i think its pointless to watercool it, why? im sure it doesnt overheat and lock up as long as its got plenty of air. Why waste the time? Lets watercool the tv and the radio, and watercool my ipod dumb

Posted at 6:25 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by digitallysick

Very stupid… and 300 bucks for a koolance waterblock and thermal take???

A custom setup would cost around 250 MAX… and since he left his xbox looking like sh!t, would have gotten better performance with apogee + MCW655 with dual rads. Much better performance and price…

This guy is an idiot, and anyone who thinks that “mod” is cool, is a complete moron

Posted at 10:05 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by ben

The only morons are those that have nothing better to do than trash other people’s work.

Posted at 11:45 pm on Apr 16th, 2006 by Mofo

Posted at 12:01 am on Apr 17th, 2006 by xboxexpert

you win the internet

Posted at 12:21 am on Apr 17th, 2006 by jason

no point if removing the serial numbers if you leave the barcode, containing the exact same number. :-)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/xboxexpert/xbox360watercooled/DSC01516.jpg

Posted at 3:14 am on Apr 17th, 2006 by jwstolk

Useless hack IMHO. For what it?! For overclocking?!

Posted at 2:33 pm on Apr 17th, 2006 by single

I’m sure that those of you who chose to slam this mod for being useless could find many other mods and hacks on this site that you *could* call useless for all the same reasons.

Hacking and modding shouldn’t be limited by what is and is not useful, but rather by what is and is not possible.

Your cynical comments, imho, hurt the very spirit of the matter.

Posted at 4:30 pm on Apr 17th, 2006 by Aariel

Man, this mod is wicked!
You’ve made us proud. Also you gotta have some balls to thrash a XBOX360 like that! Too bad it’s a little steep to put that thing together, or else i’m sure a lot of those critics would STFU.

Good job!

Posted at 7:09 pm on Apr 17th, 2006 by eyeliner

IF it’s not done, then hack a day should not post it.

STill, the quality of work is really sh!tty. I mean, the holes drilled… the alignment and it really looks like the waterblock is going to crush the cores…

This is utterly useless…. PC watercool for quiet overclocking…. and the Xbox can neither be overclocked or is it loud.

VERY stupid, idiotic and again, 300 bucks?!?! IDI0TIC if you ask me when the koolance blocks you use are very bad performing… so no overclocking here…

Posted at 7:21 pm on Apr 17th, 2006 by ben

Yeah you think you could write up something on how to water cool my NES? ( no, not really)

Posted at 10:50 pm on Apr 17th, 2006 by digitallysick

Great mod. I’ve been looking for somthing to dampen the deafing sound coming off that thing. This might be the way to do it.

Posted at 4:27 am on Apr 18th, 2006 by link.gba

You would think the 360 would come with cooling good enough to support it. If the heat was a problem microsoft probally would have added a couple more fans. Unless they’re overclocking or something imo this is pointless.

———–
http://www.computercreators.com

Posted at 7:31 am on Apr 18th, 2006 by Alex

HEY HACKERS
L WILL LOVE TO BE LECTUREDL HAVE NO ONE HELPING ME TO BE A HACKER
PLEASE IF U ARE INTERESTED PLEASE WRITE ME THROUGH MY EMAIL ID.

Posted at 11:54 am on Apr 20th, 2006 by eric

I’m on my second 360 because the first one FRIED, even with an intercooler on it. The 360 is a 4 core heater (3cpu 1 gpu) quite capable of heating a small apt all by itself. I spent 50 bucks on a replacement plan for my first 360, but I’m not going to waste anymore money on stupid servie plans, when I could keep the dang thing from overheating in the first place. I have an Elite now, but as soon as it’s out of warranty I’m going to water cool it, cause there’s no sense in the inadequate cooling it has to begin with. I’ve watercooled 2 of my 3 pc’s, and would watercool the 360 right now if it didn’t void my warranty. And seriously unless the 360 is going to stay put, then leave it as stock cooling. IMO if you’re moving your 360 around all the time, then your just asking for problems, even with stock cooling. I clean out my pc’s about every 6 mo’s, and they don’t get anywhere near the runtime that my 360 gets, and they’re absolutly caked with dust before I clean them. any heatsink should be cleaned frequently, and if it’s external, you can just use some compressed air, and never open the dang thing again.

Posted at 6:48 pm on Jun 15th, 2007 by Noey

I love finding these old posts where you see so much badmouthing over a hack being “useless” and how “microsoft would have added a couple of extra fans if cooling were a problem” when a system is first released. Then after a year or two and the known issues come out of the woodwork… well, how’s it feel now to have been proven absolutely 100% wrong guys? This actually just saved my 360. Just goes to show that the ones that want to complain because someone does something different are showed the error of their ways in the end.

Posted at 8:52 pm on Aug 15th, 2009 by devilmac99

Nice blog adding this to my twitter now

Posted at 4:45 am on Aug 22nd, 2009 by Free Gadget