Hours till Red Ring O Death?

[Kyle Lorenz]

I know a few friends that has had their Xbox 360's since it came out and nothing went wrong to this day. None of them are using auxiliary cooling too.

 

[Thunder18]

I called 1-800-4-MY-XBOX last week to order my coffin.
While I was on the phone, the rep(she was very friendly ) asked if the unit was plugged into a surge suppressor? I answered "Yes."
She informed me that my surge protector may have had caused my 360 death.
I said, "I thought they were heat related, the board warps, and that causes the BGA loosen?"

Then she read a prepared statement:
The Xbox 360 is highly sensitive to reductions in power, and even the slightest cut in power can cause things like the fans and even the DVD laser to malfunction. Surge protectors can cause this, and probably 90% of the consoles they see have all failed in 6-12 months of being plugged into a surge protector.

Even though that sounded like B.S. on many levels, I replied, "That doesn't speak well of the 360's power supply." " And, all electronics should be plugged into a good surge suppressor."

I dropped saying anything further, once I knew she was sending me an Xbox coffin.
So now it's a waiting game.

Ok seriously, are they going to repair your TV when an unsuppressed surge comes down the line connected to your Xbox360 and blows it up? This may sound crazy, but I had a similiar occurrence when a surge came through my cable box which sent it to my receiver which distributed it to my powered subwoofer, TV, PS2 and dvd/vcr. Now I have everything connected a surge protector. When I recently had the cable guy out to see why my cable box wasn't working he replaced it and said something about surge protectors messing up the signal(this is with Verizon digital cable BTW). As soon as he left, I hooked the cable boxes back up to the surge protectors including the coax connections and have had no problems since.

 

[Rickster71]

When I recently had the cable guy out to see why my cable box wasn't working he replaced it and said something about surge protectors messing up the signal(this is with Verizon digital cable BTW). As soon as he left, I hooked the cable boxes back up to the surge protectors including the coax connections and have had no problems since.

The problem with 'some' surge protectors (that have coax pass- thru) is they aren't rated for the higher frequencies of digital cable and satellite.
They have to be rated for 2.3GHz

 

[Rickster71]

The only thing I can come up with, in the Xbox360 surge protector fiasco is;
they must be assuming other equipment is also plugged into the surge protector, along with the Xbox,
TV, amp, etc. They are afraid the voltage drop will be too much.
Which leads me to believe they know the power supply doesn't meet its spec.

When you think about it, the Xbox pwr supply brick is taking the place of an ATX power supply, without a fan.