Xbox 360 had some turbulent first months where we were covered in reports about problems with overheating and instability. Now it seems that some German moders has discovered what might be the reason for the overheating and it is a real blooper. With two separately bought Xbox 360 consoles they have dissected they found that the graphics circuit’s cooler was not properly installed, Microsoft has namely forgotten to remove the protective film for the cooling paste! This will cause the GPU overheat as it does not get enough contact with the cooler. Forgetting the protective film on heatsinks with pre-applied cooling pate is a very common mistake by first timers, but that the world’s leading software developer would make the same mistake sounds almost too funnny to be true.
If this information is correct its both extremely funny and even more tragical, a small mistake that has cost Microsoft tons and tons of money and even worse, bad PR.
The cooling paste on the CPU cooler looks right, but with the GPU cooler the protective film is still attached.
At Xbox-Scene.com they’ve posted both pictures and a movie from the German moders that discovered this and where you can clearly see how the protective film still is attached to the GPU cooler.
