PSA: It's not only the clock cap on the OG Xbox...

[ASDR]

I had an OG XB die a few years ago. Never looked at it, just bought a new one for little money. I finally decided to try to fix it. I expected to find a leaked clock supercap and a corroded board, but it's this:



Looks like it was a 1.6 board where the clock capacitor is not know to leak, but all the 3300uF 6V3 electrolytics had started to dome and leak. Replacing them fixed the machine.

I was currently using a 1.4 Xbox, which is know to suffer from a leaking clock cap, also decided to open it up and do some preventative maintenance. Found this instead:



Clock cap was looking & working fine, but all the 3300uF 6V3 electrolytics looked like they were on their last leg. Removed the clock cap (softmod gets the time from the internetz anyway...) and replaced the dying Nichicons.

Every cap on both boards and PSUs looked fine, except for all 3300uF 6V3 Nichicon electrolytics. On the 1.4 there's a 3300uF 10V Nichicon right next door, even that looks fine. Guess Nichicon had a really shit batch 2004/5 of this particular model. And before that their 2V 1F supercaps, I guess.

Probably a good idea to pop open your OG XB and get rid of those. On the 1.6 there's this one cap attached to the mother of all ground planes, total bitch to clear that via even with a desoldering gun. But apart from that it's a real simple job.

While you're in there, absolutely replace the thermal pads on the CPU/GPU as well. Whatever was in there is stone dry crap. The heatsink on the GPU will be 100% stuck and you'll rip the chip of the board before you get it off, but 1-2min with the hot air @ 120C or so and it'll come off.

[nmalinoski]

While you're in there, absolutely replace the thermal pads on the CPU/GPU as well. Whatever was in there is stone dry crap. The heatsink on the GPU will be 100% stuck and you'll rip the chip of the board before you get it off, but 1-2min with the hot air @ 120C or so and it'll come off.

Not a scientific approach at all, but I would instead get the console up to temp with a game in an attempt to heat/loosen the thermal pads, then power everything off, unclip the heatsinks, and twist. With a bit of patience, I managed to get the heat sinks off my v1.0 without ripping anything out.

I'd also recommend something like Arctic Silver Arcticlean, or whatever it's called. The thermal pads on mine almost seemed completely adhered, and the 91% Iso I have wasn't cutting it. Arcticlean has a few extra ingredients that helped me get the rest of that crud off.

[ASDR]

While you're in there, absolutely replace the thermal pads on the CPU/GPU as well. Whatever was in there is stone dry crap. The heatsink on the GPU will be 100% stuck and you'll rip the chip of the board before you get it off, but 1-2min with the hot air @ 120C or so and it'll come off.

Not a scientific approach at all, but I would instead get the console up to temp with a game in an attempt to heat/loosen the thermal pads, then power everything off, unclip the heatsinks, and twist. With a bit of patience, I managed to get the heat sinks off my v1.0 without ripping anything out.

I'd also recommend something like Arctic Silver Arcticlean, or whatever it's called. The thermal pads on mine almost seemed completely adhered, and the 91% Iso I have wasn't cutting it. Arcticlean has a few extra ingredients that helped me get the rest of that crud off.

I watched a video recommending exactly those two things. But I sure as hell wasn't gonna put the board back into the case just to get the heatsink back to temperature. Especially then I'd probably have to hook up the DVD/HDD again and actually start a game and then disassemble everything quickly enough before the pad goes cold again. Hot air around 100C should be totally safe and seems far simpler to me than using the console to heat. I prepared for the worst regarding removing the remains of the thermal pad, but just IPA and a plastic spudger did the job. Heatsinks & chips were totally clean and unscratched in the end. Got lucky there, I guess.

[nmalinoski]

I watched a video recommending exactly those two things. But I sure as hell wasn't gonna put the board back into the case just to get the heatsink back to temperature. Especially then I'd probably have to hook up the DVD/HDD again and actually start a game and then disassemble everything quickly enough before the pad goes cold again. Hot air around 100C should be totally safe and seems far simpler to me than using the console to heat. I prepared for the worst regarding removing the remains of the thermal pad, but just IPA and a plastic spudger did the job. Heatsinks & chips were totally clean and unscratched in the end. Got lucky there, I guess.

I removed the heatsinks while the board was still mounted in the lower chassis. I don't think running a game to get things heated up is much of an issue if your console is softmodded so you can run a game from the hard disk, and you have enough table/desk space to have the DVD drive and hard disk resting outside the shell. (Might need to suspend the DVD drive with a pile of books to reduce tension in its power cable, but the hard disk should be manageable with a longer IDE cable and/or a Molex power extension.)

[ASDR]

I removed the heatsinks while the board was still mounted in the lower chassis. I don't think running a game to get things heated up is much of an issue if your console is softmodded so you can run a game from the hard disk, and you have enough table/desk space to have the DVD drive and hard disk resting outside the shell. (Might need to suspend the DVD drive with a pile of books to reduce tension in its power cable, but the hard disk should be manageable with a longer IDE cable and/or a Molex power extension.)

Admittedly, I only realized there's a problem in getting the heatsink off the damn GPU when I already had the board sitting on my workmat after the recapping. I then did it the same for the second console since hot air worked great first time around.

[Ikaruga11]

It looks like I'm going to have to open up my OG XBoxes to remove the clock capacitor and the 3300uF 6V3 electrolytics. I planned on keeping them sealed in a box for storage, but that doesn't seem viable.

Are there any other consoles or electronics that need capacitors or other electronic parts removed to prevent any damage?

[ASDR]

It looks like I'm going to have to open up my OG XBoxes to remove the clock capacitor and the 3300uF 6V3 electrolytics. I planned on keeping them sealed in a box for storage, but that doesn't seem viable.

Are there any other consoles or electronics that need capacitors or other electronic parts removed to prevent any damage?

In general, electrolytic caps seem to be the No 1 failure reason for game consoles, maybe tied with optical drives? One of the worsts seem to be the Turbo Duo consoles. Sega CD Model 1s are also supposedly bad. I've seen leaky Model 1 Saturns as well.

btw, make sure to softmod all your OG XB consoles as well. You can't (easily) replace the harddrive if it fails nor can you softmod it if the DVD drive fails. If you have softmodded the console, you don't need the optical drive anymore and can replace the HDD without anything terribly fancy.