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Melted Xbox grill


SignGuy81

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I just bought an Xbox with a melted grill on ebay

 

Only reason I bought it was because I was curious as to what caused it to melt(and I got it cheap) and got to looking and found these on youtube

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX186QCJqxI

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-wO7q2IMdM

 

and I've seen them before and wondered if they were fake.

 

 

 

 

Here is the link to the ebay purchase if you would like to see the melted grill you can see it best in the 2nd pic.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Microsoft-Xbox-One-Matte-Console-Only-1540-No-Power-As-Is-Repair-Broken/112635473918?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

I thought about things it could be but the way the internal casing is designed I think the melting is external and not caused internally. I asked the guy if he knew any history as far as did it go up in flames or did someone perhaps lay the board on top of the case and try to do a reflow with a hot air gun but he doesn't know, says he bought it to repair himself but didn't have time to fool with it. He also said the board inside looks fine, not blown, nothing looks burnt so I'm so far thinking I may be right that someone laid a board on it and took a hot air gun to do a reflow or something.

 

I wound up getting it for $28 and free shipping so it will still be worth it for parts.

 

 

I just figured this would be a fun guessing game of what melted the case.

 

 

When it arrives I'll throw it on my bench and see what all I can find and get it going if possible and get back with results and pics.

 

 

 

 

 

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Wow, fries an egg even with no power cord attached.

 

Ya imagine how hot that thing ran to hold that heat for that long even after being unplugged? Scary shit. They might get away with that stateside but in the EU? Microsoft is gonna get sued by the gov't for that kinda product failure for sure. The EU doesn't put up with BS like that at all. You figure MS would have learned their lesson after the 360 lawsuit for marketing what the govt deemed a product with too high of a failure rate. Guess not. So how long you think it's gonna be before someone is claiming their house got burned down becuase of an Xbox? Merry Xmas indeed.

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Ya imagine how hot that thing ran to hold that heat for that long even after being unplugged? Scary shit. They might get away with that stateside but in the EU? Microsoft is gonna get sued by the gov't for that kinda product failure for sure. The EU doesn't put up with BS like that at all. You figure MS would have learned their lesson after the 360 lawsuit for marketing what the govt deemed a product with too high of a failure rate. Guess not. So how long you think it's gonna be before someone is claiming their house got burned down becuase of an Xbox? Merry Xmas indeed.

 

In the video description:

 

Published on Dec 2, 2013

In this experiment, I heated up the top part of my Xbox One and quickly placed an egg to see if anything would occur. Behold, the egg started sizzling and almost fully turned white before enjoying it on a plate.

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/pages/TechRa...

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/TechRax

INSTAGRAM: TechRax

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Yeah that vid that was posted above with the egg was a hoax the guy heated the top of the xbox up before putting the egg on it.

 

 

Looks like I got roped into that one. I didn't see it as being too far fetched with all the smoking Xbox One's that are legit.

See kids, this is what happens when you click on a related video and don't read the headers and the fine print :dunce:

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oh yeah that egg video is fake. there is nothing underneath that area that creates any substantial heat. the bluray drive and the HDD. but even the HDD is shifted to the right of that area.post-61918-0-16567600-1510778689_thumb.jpg

 

EDIT: added IMG

EDIT 2: This Xbox1 turns on but doesn't display anything. I replaced the HDMI port and still nothing. I looked all over the board to find anything, nothing looked out the ordinary, or burned up.

Edited by DanthWader
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Okay I'm back now with an update. Decided to tear it apart this morning.

 

Before doing so I plugged it in and tried to turn it on to see what if anything it would do. The light come on for a second, made the sound it normally does when you first turn on the xbox one then it turned itself off.

 

First thing noticed was dried, tacky soda on the top shield. After getting the shield apart I noticed spots of soda on the motherboard in various places throughout.

 

Next thing I noticed when further disassembling was the x-clamp is missing from the backside of the motherboard. According to the listing, all components were with it accept the ones that he had mentioned, which there was no mention of the x-clamp being missing. I don't think I will leave him bad feedback over it however seeing as he may not have known as he advised me in a message that he had got the unit himself to fix, and he may have never gotten it apart that far to see so I will just let that go.

 

As far as the melted grill, I now believe what has happened was that someone probably had the Xbox One sitting on a coffee table, drink got spilled on it, and someone tried to dry it out with a hair dryer. That is my best guess at this point. EDIT: I believe that is more reasonable than my earlier assumption anyway as I'm sure anyone would know(at least I would hope) that it isn't a good idea to lay the mb down on the case and throw a heat gun to it but you never know with some people which is why I thought of it as a possibility, but I do think a heat gun would have done more damage to the plastic.

 

My next step will be completely cleaning the motherboard and looking to see if I can spot anything obvious on the board, and I'll be back with what I can find. I'll try to take pictures before doing any of that and post them here. EDIT 2: Looks like it will be a bit on the pictures my phone is completely dead.

Edited by SignGuy81
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Next thing I noticed when further disassembling was the x-clamp is missing from the backside of the motherboard.

I'm guessing the warranty sticker was removed...

 

EDIT: I steer clear of "broken" xboxs with the sticker removed, usually means someone like me who knows little was in there prodding with a multimeter.

Edited by DanthWader
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I'm guessing the warranty sticker was removed...

 

EDIT: I steer clear of "broken" xboxs with the sticker removed, usually means someone like me who knows little was in there prodding with a multimeter.

 

Yep, I used to reflow Xbox 360s a lot back in the day, and when I'd search on ebay for them I would add "warranty sticker intact" a lot of times to try to get one that hasn't been messed with. You wouldn't believe some of the junk I've seen done to them inside on the ones with sticker removed(or especially the ones that had a gametop warranty sticker).

 

But on this I figured $28 free shipping nothing else I could get the money back on the bluray drive or a few other parts so no big deal. If I do fix it I probably will not make much on it for the parts it is missing such as hard drive, the caddy, the side grill, and the fact the top grill is melted I would have to replace all of that to sell it, but I really just wanted one to play with that wasn't the one I use.

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I wound up washing the board completely with detergent and water with a paintbrush. It had dried soda in so many places between the little resistors, caps and IC pins on the board after cleaning them off the best I could with alcohol and toothbrush I figured the only hope for it would be a complete wash as I wouldn't want this thing to attract critters. I have to clean the fan blades as well has dried soda on it as well. Once I have it completely dried out I'll start the troubleshooting process but I already found an electrolytic cap I can wiggle one lead in and out of the hole with ease so I'll fix that first thing when it is ready for me to test and I'll come back with results. I may have an x-clamp here to use but am not sure I'll have to get it out and see. I was looking on ebay and they had one listed for $3 that said it was for Xbox 360/Xbox One so apparently they may be the same size I'll have to double check but I have a few left over from 360 units.

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Another update.

 

Where the soda sat so long on some spots i will have to touch up several solder joints on the board. One particular spot, the power controller IC, had it between the pins and actually corroded away part of the pin so I will have to repair that connection. The board is clean now. I have pics I will be uploading later I have to do it on a different computer because my phone will not connect to this one with ubuntu. The pics are also somewhat blurry I had trouble getting it to focus.

 

I'm at a point now where I've done so much already, still quite a bit more, and not sure what all else may be wrong such as other parts that may have went bad while someone perhaps tried to run it with soda shorting out components.

 

I'm gonna try to add up so far where I will be as far as cost of console and parts I know I'll need so far. These will be based on cheapest price I could find on ebay at the time which may not be available by the time I am ready to order which I will not do on some stuff until I'm sure I'm not wasting money on it.

 

Console $28

X-Clamp $3

Top case $13

Side Vent $10

Power Brick $23

HDD $40

HDD Caddy $7

HDD power/SATA cable $6

 

 

Total so far $130 (I'll add more as I go along).

 

Price of a working Xbox One just a little ways from me.

https://raleigh.craigslist.org/vgm/d/xbox-one/6385030768.html

 

Fortunately I like doing this for fun.

Edited by SignGuy81
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Having a little bit of a time with this. I finally got the board out it is completely dried. The pins on the power controller IC, and the traces leading to them, are very, very small. I have very fine point test leads and was able to confirm no connection on one of the pins to where it is leading to on the board. Looking with a jeweler's loupe I can see that both part of the pin and the trace has been corroded away. The smallest wire I have is too big to try and solder to this to fix because all the pins are so close together.

 

I'm going to remove the shielding from some of my stranded wire and try to get a few strands alone twisted together and see if I can get that on what is left of the pin and see what I can do.

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Back with another update. There is a short on the 12V supply. Also the X-clamp from the 360 fits the Xbox one so I don't have to worry about getting an X-clamp. I'm not going to try to remove a bunch of surface mount components on the board to find the short I'm going to try to burn or blow it off, and hopefully I'll be able to tell what it was when this happened. I fixed and Xbox 360 once with a short on the 12V side by hooking it up to a car battery. I'm gonna try with my bench supply and see what happens. First I'll bring power up slowly if it will even go and see if I can tell if anything is getting hot and if it pulls my supply down instead then off to the car battery it will go.

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I rechecked and it wasn't a short. I had my bench supply hooked up and as far as I could tell there is no short. When it comes on the voltage stays at 12V and doesn't drop any after pressing the power button. The 360 I had mentioned before that had similar symptoms I did the same but also the voltage dropped and current went up on my bench supply until it shut itself off. I believe the problem is going to be the power controller IC but I'm not sure, it could be anything really. I'm just thinking since I know that IC had a lot of dried drink caked in between the pins that maybe it shorted out the pins and someone applied power and it blew something in the chip, so even though I have fixed the connection and rechecked the others it still won't work. Plus there could be a lot of other bad components as well which are hard to check while in circuit especially with all the caps on the board. Unless I find the chip really cheap I'm not going to worry about it. I will probably just hang on to it, and if I get another one going at some point later on I'll use it to compare to this one and maybe get this one going but I doubt it.

 

 

EDIT: I didn't pay too much attention to the other "pins" other than the one I was looking at and tested where the trace was eaten away and I thought a pin was eaten away, but that was because they aren't pins it was just solder protruding out(or not in the case of the bad one) connecting the bottom of chip to the pads on the motherboard, I didn't realize it was made that way. It looked like I connected the wire to something on the chip in that spot but maybe I didn't even make a good connection on it. I really need to pull that chip off so I can look at all the traces I guess I'll do that next weekend or something. But here is a pic of the bottom of the chip.

font201507300402093688.jpg

 

And here it is on the motherboard(not mine a pic I found online)

font201503270333271354.jpg

Edited by SignGuy81
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