Epoxy resin is the answer to the red rings of death?
Some brave soul over at www.llamma.com has managed to not only get an Xbox 360 Elite early, (Walmart are flogging them now), but has alos taken a screwdriver to their new machine to have a gander inside.The results are slightly disappointing in that there's no suref ire way of knowing if the new 65nm chip everyone expected to see in the Elite is actually there as the die size is the same. However, other minor changes to the board would suggest that this could be a new chip as there's a different PCM set-up.
The next biggest difference is Microsoft's modification to prevent the rings of death which a blighting the Xbox 360 right now. Have they upped the cooling? Is the board running cooler with the suspected reduced power consumption? Are Microsoft using a more robust mechanism for attaching the chip to the board?
Well, it's the final question that's kind of answered in that yes, Microsoft have taken steps to reduce the chances of heat warping the board and popping the chip out of it's soldered sockets... by glueing it in with some sort of epoxy resin!.
Take a look at the excellent article at www.llamma.com and make sure you check out their nifty animated GIF showing the differences between board revisions.
