New XBOX 360 Slim Review

[Muffin Man]

Welcome to Valhalla: Inside the New 250GB Xbox 360 Slim - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

"The last revision of the Xbox 360, codenamed Jasper, was supposed to fix the infamous RRoD problem. So far my Jasper has been running fine. While Microsoft never confirmed the cause the RRoD seemed to be a result of poor cooling and manufacturing issues (either at the die/underfill level or at the solder level or both).

Needless to say, I wasn't terribly happy about purchasing a sixth Xbox 360, but here it is:

This is the latest revision of the Xbox 360, commonly referred to as the Xbox 360 Slim thanks to its shrinking in virtually all dimensions compared to the previous white box:"

- hit the link for more.

 

[Poizen22]

preaty interesting everything is possibly on 1 die

 

[PP Mguire]

Good stuff. If they would have used a slim DVD drive then they could have reduced case size even more. Im glad they integrated a wifi card, and its even N, as well as gave it 2 native SATA ports and a fan right on the heatsink. I really like what they did this time around, except made it more of a ***** to open the case. When i get one of these itll be a toss up of what i water cool. The Elite or this.

 

[james.wired]

Yep...definitely selling my 60GB pro and moving up to this. I won't be back up to the states for a really long time though so I'll have to wait.

 

[Ceeren]

The black one is smaller, why in the name of god would you want a smaller xbox? that's what caused all of it's problems, size!

 

[Yami]

My thoughts on the new Xbox: Ooh shiny, bigger harddrive and quieter, me's getting!

The black one is smaller, why in the name of god would you want a smaller xbox? that's what caused all of it's problems, size!

Not remotely true The cause of the RRODing originally was the tiny heatsinks they used (they fixed that in the first chipset revision), plus the heatsinks were attached with weird spring things instead of... screws.
If those were still a problem (better heatsinks and now the CPU and GPU are a single chip, so it's not), then a smaller Xbox would actually be better since you'd get a better concentration of airflow.

 

[Trotter]

How to trade in your old 360 for the new 360 for $90

 

[PP Mguire]

The black one is smaller, why in the name of god would you want a smaller xbox? that's what caused all of it's problems, size!

My thoughts on the new Xbox: Ooh shiny, bigger harddrive and quieter, me's getting!




Not remotely true The cause of the RRODing originally was the tiny heatsinks they used (they fixed that in the first chipset revision), plus the heatsinks were attached with weird spring things instead of... screws.
If those were still a problem (better heatsinks and now the CPU and GPU are a single chip, so it's not), then a smaller Xbox would actually be better since you'd get a better concentration of airflow.

Not entirely true. The old one first of all had 2 chips being passively cooled at 65nm. The new one has a single IHS with 2 45nm chips under neath that consume less power and put out less heat. Not only that but they have a better built, better quality, single actively cooled heatsink to cool it. The reason its smaller is because they need less board because of only having one single chip.

I was saying before the original 360 came out that they need either 2 chips, 2 actively cooled heatsinks, or one monolithic chip with a larger actively cooled non bracket style heatsink. Also the first one wasnt being built all that great either. This one looks like the build quality is a bit better.

They could have made it even smaller (Size of the board) if they would have used a slim DVD drive with the HDD underneath it. I honestly dont think heat will be an issue with this 360. What sucks though, is its still a rehash of old tech and nothing new.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

I dislike how 3/4ths of the heatsink is surrounded by parts... The only place it can vent well is at the right/bottom of it...

 

[PP Mguire]

I believe thats the whole idea lol