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XBox (Games) Graphics Microsoft Games Hardware

New Xbox 360 S Uses Less Power, Makes Less Noise 176

Vigile writes "Microsoft unveiled a new Xbox 360 S console at E3 this month, and without delay the new machine has been dissected and tested. The most dramatic change is the move to a single-chip CPU/GPU hybrid processor that is apparently being built on the 45nm process technology from GlobalFoundries, AMD's spun-off production facilities. With the inclusion of the new processor, the Xbox 360 S uses much less power (about 30-40%) compared to previous generation machines, and also turns out to be much quieter as a result of a single, larger fan. This article has photographic evidence of the teardown, with comparisons between this Valhalla platform and the older Falcon system, along with videos of the reconstruction process and noise comparisons." The new console also takes measures to protect itself from overheating, so RRoDs shouldn't be a problem with this revision.
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New Xbox 360 S Uses Less Power, Makes Less Noise

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  • Shouldn't? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by feepness ( 543479 ) on Thursday June 24, 2010 @05:50AM (#32675750)

    The new console also takes measures to protect itself from overheating, so RRoDs shouldn't be a problem with this revision.

    They shouldn't have been a problem with any revision.

  • by Zuriel ( 1760072 ) on Thursday June 24, 2010 @06:17AM (#32675864)

    New Xbox 360 S Uses Less Power, Makes Less Noise

    ...Has Less Cooling, Still Overheats

    Why is it all hardware is set by default to run just barely below the overheat point? It just makes it more likely to die, sitting at those temperatures and then you have to replace it... wait, answered my own question.

    • Because customers like their hardware fast, cheap, small, and quiet?

      If you make it slow, you barely have to bother cooling it.

      If you make it expensive, you can invest in high-quality thermal engineering, loads of heat pipes, and whatever else is necessary.

      If you make it big, you can just slap an obnoxiously gigantic heatsink and a couple of 120mm(or larger) fans on it, and it'll be fine.

      If you make it loud, the magical world of 15k RPM fans is open to you(y hello thar, 1U servers...).

      The fact
    • by Sockatume ( 732728 ) on Thursday June 24, 2010 @06:36AM (#32675976)

      Less cooling my arse. It has a much larger heat-sink and a proper 120mm fan bolted right on top of it. It's got comparable cooling to my enthusiast desktop. Not to mention the simple, inescapable thermodynamic certainty that a machine that is consuming less electrical power will produce less heat.

      • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
        Pshaw! Flimflam! I piss on your silly laws of thermodynamics!
      • Not to mention the simple, inescapable thermodynamic certainty that a machine that is consuming less electrical power will produce less heat.

        My wife's hairdryer consumes less electrical power than a 360 and still runs hotter. ;)

    • Why is it all hardware is set by default to run just barely below the overheat point?

      Because when we had high power computers that continued to cool to their best effort, people complained about how noisy they were. By the time you add 3-4 cooling fans and have them running at full power, things get quite noisy. So, you have to use some sort of tradeoff. From the perspective of a console maker, why not run it at some high temperature like 85C? If you have confidence that you can keep it from getting to

  • Finally... (Score:2, Insightful)

    The Xbox 360 we should have got 5 years ago...

  • If only they had done that the first time......

  • by noidentity ( 188756 ) on Thursday June 24, 2010 @07:24AM (#32676268)

    The new console also takes measures to protect itself from overheating, so RRoDs shouldn't be a problem with this revision.

    I'm impressed with the clever solution they had to this: replace the red LEDs with green ones. Guaranteed, no more red ring of death. Just don't ask about the green ring of death [google.com].

    • I'm impressed with the clever solution they had to this: replace the red LEDs with green ones. Guaranteed, no more red ring of death. Just don't ask about the green ring of death.

      Nah, they just made the existing green LEDs multipurpose. It's much more cost effective to include just four green LEDs than four green and four red, after all! I mean, that might shave $0.04 off the unit cost!

      (Disclaimer: I have no idea how much LEDs cost. Googling for it brings back prices on LED screens and full-on LED replac

    • RRoD was the least of my worries. My xbox just froze. All...the...time. After 3 repair jobs, I gave up on the whole franchise. Though I miss Halo and Forza, I love my PS3 and never look back.
    • Of course the damn thing could just turn itself off when it gets too hot.

  • by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Thursday June 24, 2010 @08:45AM (#32677030) Homepage Journal

    I'm 2 years running into my 20 gig Xbox 360 unit. I really wish Microsoft would reduce the hard drive add-on prices to more realistic levels. The casing around the HD can't cost THAT much. It would almost be better to just buy the new slim unit(that has over 10 times the hard drive space I have) than to buy the 250 gig drive alone.

    I could buy a 1 terabyte drive for my system for less than they charge for a 120 gig unit.

    • by IICV ( 652597 )

      Then do it. It's not like there's some magical proprietary hard drive connectors in there; the only thing you have to do is flash the hard drive's firmware with one the Xbox recognizes.

    • I could buy a 1 terabyte drive for my system for less than they charge for a 120 gig unit.

      Get an external USB one and plug it in, then. Some time ago a dashboard update added the ability to use arbitrary USB storage devices on the Xbox 360.

      • http://www.xboxpotato.com/2010/03/usb-flash-drive-support-coming/ [xboxpotato.com]

        Microsoft has announced that a new system update will be released over Xbox Live on April 6th that will allow support for USB flash drives as a storage option for Xbox 360 content. This means 360 owners can use any USB flash drive over 1GB (up to 16GB) in size to back up profiles, saves, demos, etc.

        Yes, that mean that you can only use 16 GB of an USB disk. What, did you think MS were growing soft on their old days?

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