I'm on 4th XBOX360 in two years...

[firehawk12]

Ah, I didn't think about the heatsink. That makes sense.

And the rumour is that the 60GB Pros have the new 65nm GPUs but I have no idea if that was ever confirmed.
Their big problem was the fact that they just designed the box to be too small. Yeah, the PS3 is a humongous BBQ grill, but it's got enough space for heat to circulate out of the system through the many, many vents and fans.
I'm sure if the system was just larger they might have gotten away with their otherwise shitty engineering.

 

[StolenThunder]

I think my flatmate went through 8 or 9 returns in the end. He has two now and neither has broken in a good while.

Should have made him buy more lottery tickets.

 

[Rii]

Their big problem was the fact that they just designed the box to be too small. Yeah, the PS3 is a humongous BBQ grill, but it's got enough space for heat to circulate out of the system through the many, many vents and fans.

Given that Xbox 360 employs a rather large external power supply, whereas PS3's is internal, I don't think there's much difference in size between the two.

 

[JonathonWally]

I waited till last year and picked up an elite because people said it had the newer hardware in it and that was a bit more reliable. No idea if that solves anything, but I like it.

 

[Fedaykin]

I waited till last year and picked up an elite because people said it had the newer hardware in it and that was a bit more reliable. No idea if that solves anything, but I like it.

Yeah, my friend waited for the Elite for the same reason. He's on his third "better" system right now. Failed twice in less than a year.

 

[The Evil Dead]

I've had the same Xbox 360 since September 2006. In that time it's gone on to conquer games such as Mass Effect, Bioshock, Grand Theft Auto IV and Fallout 3. It's the Battlestar Galactica of Xbox 360s.

It's only ever had one glitch and that is that 30% of the time I turn it on I get a quarter red ring, but restarting it always fixes that problem. If that's the worst problem it gives me, I can't complain too much.

 

[firehawk12]

Their big problem was the fact that they just designed the box to be too small. Yeah, the PS3 is a humongous BBQ grill, but it's got enough space for heat to circulate out of the system through the many, many vents and fans.

Given that Xbox 360 employs a rather large external power supply, whereas PS3's is internal, I don't think there's much difference in size between the two.

I just remember some design company breaking down the 360 and studying air flow patterns and heat dissipation rates based on the current design. I just remember that the shape and size of the case being a factor in how fast the system could expel heat.

 

[gh4chiefs]

I waited till last year and picked up an elite because people said it had the newer hardware in it and that was a bit more reliable. No idea if that solves anything, but I like it.

Yeah, my friend waited for the Elite for the same reason. He's on his third "better" system right now. Failed twice in less than a year.

I had recently sold both of my 360's and had decided I was going to get out of the Xbox business. But then I started hearing about the new designs, the new chipsets, etc, and I thought maybe they had finally got that worked out. And I'm kind of thinking about getting one of the new 60 gb models.

But now I read this post and I'm wondering if it's just going to be more of the same. You would think at some point they could figure this out.

 

[Arrqh]

Thing is that people who get multiple failures are the rarity. Most people who buy a 360 now won't ever see a failure.

 

[gh4chiefs]

Thing is that people who get multiple failures are the rarity. Most people who buy a 360 now won't ever see a failure.

I guess I need to buy a lottery ticket or something because most of the people that I personally know that have 360's have had multiple failures.

My launch unit died at 16 months but before the 3yr warranty was announced so I elected (stupidly) to buy another unit. I later sold that unit to a friend, and it died. So that's really 2 RROD's for me. One of my co-workers is on about his 4th xbox. My other co-worker has gone through 3 I believe. Another co-worker who has a 360 is on his second one.

Maybe we all just got a bad batch here in central MO or something, but the statistics with my co-workers are pretty bad.

 

[Fedaykin]

Thing is that people who get multiple failures are the rarity. Most people who buy a 360 now won't ever see a failure.

I guess I need to buy a lottery ticket or something because most of the people that I personally know that have 360's have had multiple failures.

My launch unit died at 16 months but before the 3yr warranty was announced so I elected (stupidly) to buy another unit. I later sold that unit to a friend, and it died. So that's really 2 RROD's for me. One of my co-workers is on about his 4th xbox. My other co-worker has gone through 3 I believe. Another co-worker who has a 360 is on his second one.

Maybe we all just got a bad batch here in central MO or something, but the statistics with my co-workers are pretty bad.

Maybe just you and I know the people who have had multiple failures. Every single person who I know who has a 360 has seen at least one failure, but the average is two repairs. We all bought them at different times, so it's not as if we all bought from the same bad batch.

 

[Arrqh]

Yeah, that's the odd thing about it... failures seem to come in groups. Maybe it is down to the units that got shipped to certain areas or something, but that definitely doesn't represent the universal failure rate.

 

[Fedaykin]

Yeah, that's the odd thing about it... failures seem to come in groups. Maybe it is down to the units that got shipped to certain areas or something, but that definitely doesn't represent the universal failure rate.

Well, it certainly was a big enough deal to cost Microsoft a billion dollars. I love my Xbox when it works. Had zero problems with my original Xbox, as a matter of fact it still works perfectly. It's fairly well known that the 360 was ruched into stores to secure market share, it's a bit unfortunate that the very consumers who gave them that early edge paid 400 bucks for something that is prone to break down from regular usage.

Who am I kidding, I'm eagerly awaiting my consoles return and will buy man more games.

 

[Trubinator]

I've had mine for over a year with no problems. I've barely ever had a crash.

 

[gh4chiefs]

I've had mine for over a year with no problems. I've barely ever had a crash.

I used to be in that same boat. And then RROD got me at about 16 months. I was pretty skeptical of all this talk until me and 2 co-workers had failures all within 2 weeks of each other.

And before somebody starts in on me for 360 bashing. Not bashing, just saying what happened. I still like the 360, just not comfortable with it's reliablity. And I discovered I can only play one game at a time and I have enough games for the PS3 to keep me busy.

That being said, if I can snag one of the Target's "black Friday" deals, I may get yet another 360.

 

[Arthur Frelling Dent]

I confess that I used to be one of those people who dismissed the allegedly epic failure rate as a small number of complainers online making a lot of noise and thus appearing to be a larger percentage of users than they really were.

Then my 360 died.

I bought it in October 2006 and it lasted nearly 2 years with only the occasional error code (E68?) at start-up. As annoyed as I was at the time, I must say I found the whole repair process through Microsoft's website very quick and easy. I had my own 360 back just 2 weeks after I requested the repair. So far it's run perfectly without a single error.