Xbox ultimate cooling + USB mod

[misjah]

So, I just traded my spare Dreamcast and NES for untested Xbox with my buddy who is in fact the only one interested in consoles. It came with one new (yobo) joypad, one old original (without short adapter) and no mod chip. I had to make my own video cable that is directly soldered to board. Spent hours searching for softmod tutorial that doesn`t involve original DVD game (which I don`t have too) and finally found it. It requires some soldering directly to board for bios reading but it`s pretty simple and it`s working great. Swapped original HDD with 20GB one. I`m finally able to play a bunch of downloaded games and many cool emulators.... the only problem was that console is heating up, really heating up! Cpu and chipset are pretty hot and power supply is so hot that I can boil some eggs for breakfast.... I decided to add some extra cooling and avoid Xbox meltdown, maybe even a fire....
First thing to do: adding a little heatsink on gpu:
I ``borrowed`` it from some motherboard and the metal part is the one that was holding some old pentium cpu. It needs some bending and cutting plastic case that holds DVD rom.





This is actually not enough so I had to add a little cooler, found the right spot for that:







Next, I replaced huge heatsink without cooler with another smaller for some pentium II cpu. I bent the holder so it can fit non-standard xbox heatsink holder.... The plastic that is holding HDD needs to be cut too for airflow. This way hard disk is also chilled... i made splitters for small fan connector and another is attached to molex with HDD.





Power supply:
Wow, I didn`t notice caution message!







Need some metal case cutting (with regular clippers). Since there is no place left, power supply fan is placed outside and it`s firmly holded with two screws...

[SonyPortableizer]

sweet, there is also a chip on it that produces a lot of heat. If you put a heatsink on it your will be all set

[misjah]

My other joypad came without short adapter at the end of cable so I replaced it with regular USB cable. This way I can use it with PC too. I also added female USB connector inside the memory card slot. It can read regular flash drives (not all of them), memory card readers and it is possible to plug USB mouse.





Also added one to console:
It can be used for joypad, memory card, mouse and even regular USB HUB - this way I have 4 ports for various devices....





This is it. All the stuff used here was laying around in my room and ``workshop``
If you want more details about wiring and stuff, feel free to ask. I can also post short version for softmod....

[misjah]

sweet, there is also a chip on it that produces a lot of heat. If you put a heatsink on it your will be all set

Which one? I think they are all cooled now.

[SonyPortableizer]

you did get it, my computer didnt load the first image, so I scrolled down to the other ones, then just now noticed you got it

[desertman123]

What's that white stuff on the cap?

Also don't love you xbox THAT much.

[misjah]

It`s just some kind of glue to keep sensitive parts glued to PCB, hard disk power cable is very close to these caps and coil, it can break them when opening xbxox....
``Also don't love you xbox THAT much.`` What do you mean?

[SonyPortableizer]

hes indicating reproductive things of the male anatomy

[misjah]

Haha! That`s right, I`m going to have a small baby xbox....
(bad grammar can lead to misunderstanding....)

[Harlequin]

Replace the PSU with a Pico PSU and an ATX to XBOX power converter to reduce the size of your PSU area (and keep it cooler). You can then move the external fan to an internal location. Alternatively, you can bust it up with a small water cooling unit instead.... Nice work on the USB, not everyone does that anymore. I would find some small pack of heatsinks, I've seen them before when they come in random sizes, usually for video card cooling. I'd replace the one chip cooler with one a bit closer to its size and hit the ram up to... oh and if you have time/patience, your xbox can have it's ram doubled too if you have the right kind of ram available.

Final note - a USB to PS/2 mouse/keyboard splitter works dreams. No problem finding keyboard and mouse on mine.

[misjah]

Thanx for the info. I was wondering if USB to PS/2 will work. I am going to get it since I have a bunch of PS/2 keyboards... Unfortunately pico psu is not available in my country and the shipment is double the price, and for the memory job I don`t have the right tools since it`s very tricky, but it would be good thing to do....