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| The Xbox and its surroundings pre-kludge. |
With Gears of War 3 coming out this month (not to mention Zune Marketplace having been my source for new Doctor Who episodes) I've been running my Xbox more than usual lately, and it shows. Seriously, I could heat my house with that thing. I'm actually not joking, I'm pretty sure I could. So it occurred to me, in the interest of continuing to have a working console that I can turn on and use, that it was time to do some work on the thing.
This is my "entertainment center". Here you'll find my PS3, my Xbox, my Wii, my sweet PC, and for good measure an old VCR (I totally use that thing!). The credenza was pretty cheap – about $90 from Target – and I've had no complaints about it. Granted, a credenza is not the sort of thing that sane people ordinarily complain about. Oh, and the weird pile of watercolor board, hanging folder and framed mixed media art in the foreground has since been replaced with a real rolling table for my mouse and keyboard and stuff. I'm not that big a slob, come on guys.
The problem with this was, of course, cooling-related. The Playstation 3 that I have on the top shelf is fine, as it vents air through the "sides", or, if you have it standing on end, takes in air from the bottom (where the hard drive sits) and pushes it out the top (near status lights and power button). However the Xbox 360 was designed in an era before thermodynamics as we know it, and instead is designed to build up a ton of heat and force it out a three-by-six-inch area with two really small, really loud fans. In the cubby in my credenza (all these words I thought I'd never get a chance to use!) this was disastrous, because the heat was blasting straight into that piece of cardboard nailed to the back. How do you solve this problem, you ask? You cut a hole.
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| The best part about this is that my credenza glows now. |
The right way to do this, I'm fully aware, is to use a utility knife, but I used a Dremel with a cutting disk attachment, because I had one and not the other. Unfortunately, the back of the cabinet was really thin particleboard, not just cardboard, and those particles are pretty incredibly noxious when they're blowing around in the air, so most of the cutting was done with open windows and a dust mask. Again, this is bad. If you're cutting something like this stuff, I recommend at least getting some moving air, ventilation, a respirator, and if at all possible a non-moving blade.
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| A clear view of the hack with Xbox removed. |
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| The old power supply sits behind the TV. |
In theory, removing some of the resistance on the escaping air would make a big difference, but it didn't seem like enough to me, so I looked around my worktable and dug up an ancient 300W computer power supply and a $4 blue 120mm cooling fan I had sitting around. The fan I adhered to the inside of the cabinet using 3M's 4011 double-sided mounting tape, directed to blow the hot air out the back of the TV stand. Meanwhile, I rigged the PSU to bypass the on-off pins on the motherboard connector so that it can run on its own uninterrupted, and turned on and off using the switch on the back. Not the most efficient way to power a fan, but it's very easy to turn the whole thing off when it isn't needed. Not bad for forty minutes' worth of work. And don't forget, it glows blue. Who knew that it would look so cool and so ugly at the same time??
For those of you with an extra power supply laying around who want to know how to abuse it like I did,
here are the instructions I used to mod mine. It's mind-bendingly simple.
The new ventilation port works, I'm happy to report. I no longer feel a heat wave waft over me every time I bend down to turn on the VCR.
