Quiet down OG Xbox

[derFunkenstein]

I've had an OG Xbox for just about ever, soft-modded with a 500GB hard drive, but man that sucker is loud. Mine is a 1.0 version so it's got the tiny fan on the GPU. On eBay I found the 1.1 heatsinks available for like $8 shipped so I picked one up and waiting for it to arrive. Also I found lots of reviews that say this fan is a great sub for the original exhaust fan. So I have one of them coming, too.

 

Any original Xbox fans (ha!) out there? How do you run yours? New fans or just the originals?

 

My plan is to remove both the CPU and GPU heatsinks, slap on some new Arctic Silver 5, put on the passive sink, and swap out the fan. Hoping it'll be at least a little quieter without introducing a lot of noise. The fan in mine sounds like it's going to die, getting really whiny, and I don't want that to happen.

[Gamemoose]

Mine sounds like a frickin' jet when I boot it to the softmod. I've always wondered how to get mine to quiet down. Keep us all posted on how your setup goes!

[derFunkenstein]

So this setup is great. A couple of things:

 

- Some of the Amazon reviews say you have to remove one of the corners from the fan to make the hard drive bracket fit. I did not have to do thiat

- Removing the stock exhaust fan is a little weird. there are a couple of clips at the bottom that you have to pull out and then lift up.

- The replacement fan in my 1.0 Xbox is held entirely by those clips mentioned above

- The GPU heatsink is very beefy. I had a hard time getting the old one up because I was afraid of damaging the chip because the old paste had hardened.

- Use copious amounts of 90% isopropyl alcohol to clean the chips and the new heatsink

- The 1.1 and later CPU heatsink is identical to the heatsink in my 1.0 unit so I didn't replace that. I did remove it, clean the old material, and put on new paste.

- I accidentally clipped one of the wires on the fan cable because it was poking out above my DVD drive. I stripped a little on both ends and taped it up, good as new. Just be careful putting your Xbox back together.

 

In XBMC, I set the fan speed to a flat 50%. I can't hear the fan until it passes that mark (which is amazing), and sitting in XBMC the temps hovered around 90 degrees F. But games will override those settings with whatever the XBox does, so I'm not sure that was worthwhile.

 

I played Spider-Man 2 for an hour (and let it sit with him standing in the street for another 30 minutes). I did hear the fan kick up a little during that test but I had to turn down the game sounds to hear it clearly. Then after the whole 90 minute test I reset back to XBMC to see temperatures. It reported CPU temp of 125F and GPU temp of 130F, which is very typical for my system. It appears to do a good job maintaining temps, since the XBox is just doing its default thing (with my fan override settings disabled, apparently). My house thermostat is set to 78F, so the room temp should be right around that.

 

Since then I've played a ton of NFS Underground 2, Spider-Man 2, and GTA San Andreas and it's been rock-solid and extremely quiet even under a load. Not sure what else you'd like to know but if you have something please ask.

[Osgeld]

keep in mind the 125F reported above is about 52c which is quite acceptable for a cpu

 

I have mine set about the same, I rarely hear it

[R.Cade]

What is there is not hardened CPU paste, it's glue/cement... That's why it's so hard to remove.

[Osgeld]

What was on mine a decade or more ago was that pink goo glue cheap that was ever so popular at the time

 

Anything is better than that stuff after the first week or two

[derFunkenstein]

What is there is not hardened CPU paste, it's glue/cement... That's why it's so hard to remove.

Mine was some sort of black pad. It wasnt really adhesive but it had solidified. Scraping it with a plastic putty knife did the trick.

 

And yeah, 125F is fine.

 

I did have a lock up tonight in PCSXBOX but Im not sure it was temperature related. I quickly power-cycled the system and the menu said it was still at that same 125-ish temp. Im sure even if it went up to 130-135 that wouldnt have been overheating. Im thinking of getting a 3-pin to molex adapter and running the fan all out. Even that is still quieter than it was. Just not sure if its necessary. If it locks up again I will for sure.

Edited June 30, 2018 by derFunkenstein