Xbox Crammed Into Inch-thick Package

Xbox Micro

Reminiscent of [Ben Heck]’s portable and laptop console mods, [Bandit5317] over at Xbox-Scene managed to fit the guts of an original Xbox into a custom-built slim case that measures just 2.5 centimeters thick. In his post, he describes some of the difficulties of cutting down a behemoth Xbox to a third of its original size, such as rewiring a custom IDE cable to avoid the extra 1/16-inch it would take to fold a standard one. The case is hand-crafted, (no laser cutter!) no-frills box made of painted polycarbonate, and man is it sexy. It is built off of a v1.4 motherboard running a third-party BIOS and with a 320GB laptop hard drive. Load up XBMC Media Center and you’ve got the slimmest home theater PC on the block.

[thanks FranklyCrafty]

24 thoughts on “Xbox Crammed Into Inch-thick Package

  1. I wonder how cool it runs. X-BOX’s are notoriously hot, but I personally believe most of the problem was Microsoft’ inability to built a proper case, which this guy has replaced.

  2. Very attractive, and good use of existing hardware. However for the “slimmest home theater PC on the block.” one could throw aesthetics out the window and rip the screen off a laptop.

  3. thermal design, anyone…?

    making a smaller case, in general, is going to make thermal performance worse, not better. good thermal management is much harder than you’d think

  4. Reminds me of my Popcorn Hour NMT, looks like its cousin. Amazing work, I would also like to add that the original xbox is hands down your best STV Media Center choice by far when considering cost vs performance. $35 for what it can do is unreal.

    I recently traded a softmodded xbox with xbmc+loaded with emus and roms (strictly legal ones :) ) for a xbox360 = thats how stoked people are on it.

    @zERO

    I often suggest this to owners of older laptops with broken screens. It just isn’t cost effective to replace the screen most times.

  5. Beautiful work. I’m partial to the blue LED style, and the vents look properly sized where needed. Any info on running temps while playing movies? I’ll check the link when I get to a network that doesn’t block that website.

  6. “Predictably, it doesn’t exactly run cool. The CPU idles at 100*F and the GPU at 120*F, even with the GPU heatsink fan running at 12v. In games the CPU runs around 130*F and the GPU hits 140*F.”

  7. @na

    Xbmc is capable of playing some 720p material flawlessly, I don’t remember it exactly, but the videos needs to be formatted a certain way. I remember finding videos in this format. I watched some planet earth 720p.

  8. @na
    @36chambers

    xbmc is capable of playing practically anything you can throw at it. the issue is not the software, but the hardware. the original xbox is severely limited in what it can play.

  9. Uh… “I just didn’t have the room to fold the cable to make the 90* turn. It may have only added 1/16″, but that was too much, so I rewired it with a 90* turn.”

    Timing issues with HDD transfers, anyone?

  10. I think slimmest home theater PC still has to go to the popcorn hour… albeit it can’t play games it does full 1080p video, streaming, surfing, and supports a bazillion formats.

  11. Anyone know how this ‘box is powered? I can see a coaxial jack in the top right of the image, but how is this converted and regulated to the voltages required by an xBox?

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