Oh No New 360S Still Uses The Old X Clamp On Chipset

[calvinandhobbes]

RAZurrection said:

thismeintiel said:

So wait...do the newer "old" style 360's use this X-clamp as well?  Or was it just the first models?  If it's the latter, and given we know the "new" 360 uses the same crappy disk drive as before, are this models actually just repackaging of old parts?  I'm sure that might not be likely, but do we have comfirmation on what type of chipset these new models use? 

Ok i'll break it down.

All Xbox 360s use X-clamps to hold the CPU/GUP heat sinks firmly to the motherboard.

The first 11 million or so Xbox 360s had the largest chips and therefor, the hottest. With heat, the board and it's parts would flex. Even assuming a thorough gaming session weekly would only flex the board 0.1mm a week, that's still 5CM a year. Thus over a year or more, the firm hold of the x-clamp started to become less firm, after a certain amount of slack an xbox 360 will RRoD (1 or 3 lights usually)

This is why some launch models took anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 years to rrod, it was all a gradual erosion. It is also why performing an "X-clamp fix" can fully fix a RRoD 360, because it reaffirms the firm hold (using nuts and bolts) to the mo-bo.

Any way, in 2007 Microsoft released a smaller CPU, then a year later a smaller GPU, then 18 months later an even smaller CPU/GPU hybrid.

The smaller the chips got, the less the internal heat.

The less heat, the less flexing.

The less flexing...the firmer the hold of the X-clamp

This is why RRoD became an ever decreasing issue, partly with the first chip shrink and almost entirely by the time the system chips were both 65nm. These current models are even better, plus as it's a single chip now, theres less chance of either a CPU or GPU acting up, it's all one and the same.

 

sounds like this RAZ explained it well enough. So having the x clamp is not a bad thing after all.