Been hearing a lot of negative stuff about the Nyko intercooler for the Xbox 360 and after doing some digging around i came to the conclusion that having a 3rd party hardware sucking up and disturbing the streamlined power being sent to the console using extremely powerful fans which might have variable power inputs depending on their quaity is good enough to ruin ones 360. But we still need the intercooler as Microsoft has pretty much abandoned us when it comes to cooling their monsters down.
Hence I modded my intercooler. Here are the steps I took :
First off i thought I would simply open the intercooler and disconnect its fans. With the help of an opening I brought the wires out and tried to feed them power via USB.
there was a black and brown wire that I cut and brought out through the opening. The connections inside looked solid ( for the remaining cables ) so i decided to leave everything intact. I closed the intercooler, powered up the USB and gave it a test.
It could have been a disaster, the USB was maxed out at 5V while the fans needed 12 volts at .13 amps each ( power hungry monsters, another reason i dont want them sucking off my 360's power ) and the USB couldnt supply them with enough. The 360 actually became hotter than 2 hrs of Gears of War while it was simply idling !!
I had no choice, i needed a stronger power supply. The sollution : a cheap 350W computer power supply. I rigged the thing to turn on when connected and attached the fans to them and boy was there some cooling to be seen !! An hour of Ghost Recon AW and the 360 felt cooler than it does when its on the dashboard doing nothing !!
All was good but there was still a problem. The power input for the 360 was still comming through the intercooler and i wasnt too happy with this. Given that the cases where the intercooler fries the 360 its power plug leaves a burn mark on the 360 that voids the warranty I decided to get rid of it.
So with the aid of a saw from the dollar store i started off. I cut off the following portion...
.....and was left with....
this way the 360's power cable goes in directly and surprisingly the intercooler seems to be able to balance without its plug going into the 360.
Conclusion : the system is much cooler now and in multiplayer i have actually seen a performance difference ( Played Ghost Recon AW and some huge explosions caused everyones 360 to lag for a second, even the hosts but mine barely stuttered :) Also this allows me to run the fan for a few minutes after i turn off the 360 so that the heat does not stay inside when the internal fans turn off.
Let me know what you guys think.
2 comments:
That right now is the best thing you can do to try and prevent the console from dying. Taking the heat out while the box is off after use really helps. All the baking inside warps the board I think tearing up the solder points on the chips. Nice job.
I did the exact same mod except I sliced the very bottom off of the casing and epoxied it right to the bottom under the lower fan. I used a mitre box with a hacksaw and was able to make some pretty precise cuts. It's a tight fit but it does fit. Also you can use a small 12v power supply you can buy at places like radio shack. I have one that is switchable from 12v to 6v. 12v is pretty loud, 9v is not too bad but I use 12v. Also, the best part is to get yourself a remote switch,
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=1275&cpc=SCH
you plug the base into the ac outlet and plug your PS into the base, you have your little remote switch and click! the fans are on, leave them on for a few minutes after you shut down the console and then click! there off. Both practical and convenient!
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