With that cooler in the XBox One, they could probably cool 1000GBytes of ram without risking rrod2 , so the problem is not getting rid of the additional heat (though ddr3 chips are more probematic than gddr5 chips, by design). The problems are simply in the engineering department: 1. How do you add 4GB ddr3 ram onto a 256bit bus (they come in *16bit widths max) ?  2. Can your APU drive the additional memory? 3. Did you order enough dram chips or are you willing to pay spot market prices because you didn't order enough? Some things can be solved with lots of cash (though I doubt MS wants to lose too much money on hardware), some other thing might require months of testing - time MS simply doesn't have.

well to be honest the longest task in making a console is probably putting the PCB in the plastic box and then in the cardboard box.... if those tasks are made by humans.... the rest is probably bots doing the job.... so production could start in a couple weeks and still meet the dead line IMO....

the other issue in case of a design change is sourcing the component.... but IMO production theoretical capabilities is not the issue here...

On the contrary, manufacturing capabilities are the key to understanding why console availability will likely be limited. First of all, 28nm lines are not growing on trees, and if you couldn't get enough time allocated at TSMC (or GF, probably the more risky path), good luck then with your yields instead. It's not like MS and Sony are the only customers, all the 28nm lines are very likely "sold out" until way into 2014. Secondly you need someone to assemble all the boxes, and Foxconn/Pegatron do not have unlimited manufacturing capacity, since again, MS and Sony are not the only ones going into Xmas season.

What is this, are they packing in the cloud inside the box now? I think they have their heads on the clouds, they'd better work hard so the console doesn't join them up there soon.

The cheapest and easiest solution to that problem is to add an extra 8GB.

I was merely hoping you would enlighten others to the fact that RROD was a a systemic fault with the design of the original 360 board and a lack of understanding on the ramifications of moving to lead free solder.  Had the board been thicker the issue wouldn't have occurred.  It had nothing to do with any changes to memory or a rush to market and everything to do with inexperience of lead free solder.  Not surprisingly most companies suffered including the likes of Nvidia and most motherboard manufacturers (especially notebooks).

You never know what might happen. maybe they'll use the extra ram for a better T.V. integration so you can use your kinect to skip commercials.


I'm joking

I think it is pretty agreed upon that the horribly bad cooling design in the original X360 lead to rrod (the lf solder didn't really matter in the end, it would have backfired with any solder). Basically, if I remember correctly, it was the cooling fan position that killed it (the original XBox had the fan right next to the major heat source, the original XBox360 maintained the fan position but had the heat source moved away too far from it, which caused almost immediate overheating.

How the hell would this work? The console already has a launch date right?

I'd believe this if it were as easy as switching RAM on a PC/Laptop. Everything here is onboard and I don't think things will go smoothly by changing the specs at the last minute. Calling bullshit.

Honestly, I thought 8 GB was overkill. This should have been the 4 to 6 GB generation.

I've seen every cooling mod going done to try and prevent RROD, none worked because that wasn't the core of the problem.  The biggest issue is the board warps as it goes through heat cycles, the poorer quality of lead free solder meant the joints broke quicker, this is proven by the fact that when the chips were reballed with leaded solder the issues were vastly reduced (only 3rd parties obviously as Microsoft weren't allowed to do that).  A thicker board wouldn't have warped to the same extent and there for allowed more tolerance.  Its clear that the GPU seperating from the board due to warping was a concern which is why Microsoft took to gluing the chips in an effort to minimize flexing.