# Xbox modding.



## Radical_Edward (Apr 6, 2010)

Now, I know it's a "console" but being as consoles are just PC's anyways, I think this deserves it own thread. 

Plus, I'm bored and my Xbox doesn't get used much anymore, so I figured it'd be a fun little project. I still have quite a few plans for this thing, so don't think this is it. 

Okay, first of all I'm not going to say this is a guide of any kind, and I'm going to warn you, there's a danger of shocking yourself pretty well doing this, maybe even death, as the XBox PSU is not enclosed from the rest of the components. :shadedshu

Anyways, here's some photos and information of what I've done so far. 

Naturally, we have the Xbox itself. 











As you can see here, I've already removed the Hard drive, desk drive, and the original Delta fan. 

Here's a size comparison to a normal 80mm. 






Another few photos of the stock Delta fan











As you can see in the following photo, I've removed the "pegs" that held the old Delta fan in place, and "trimmed" the 80mm fan down. (Turns out I should have just trimmed the HDD and disk drive carriers, which I ended up having to do anyways.) 






Here we have the fan in place, It runs fine and is moving more air then the Delta did before. Plus, I still have a 3 pin connector on the "motherboard" to use. time to dig thru the parts bin for a small fan to sneak onto the heatsink. 






That's all for now, I'll make sure to update this thread again tomorrow with more pictures. 

More ideas I'm thinking about... 


-Placing the Xbox itself in a PC case, instead of this rag tag Xbox thing. 

-Putting a 3 pin fan on the "CPU" heatsink. 

If you have any ideas you would like to share, or any other input I'd love to hear it. 

~Rad_Ed


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## Kreij (Apr 6, 2010)

> Okay, first of all I'm not going to say this is a guide of any kind, and I'm going to warn you, there's a danger of shocking yourself pretty well doing this, *maybe even death*, as the XBox PSU is not enclosed from the rest of the components.



Being killed by an XBox would be so embarrasing, I would tell someone to lie about my death before I started the project just in case 

Interesting stuff. I like your idea of putting it in a real case. You could get a lot better cooling on the components if you took them out of that oven (XBox case).

Since you are modding, I would liquid cool the whole thing.
Go way overboard and have a separate loop, pump and res for each components.
Give each loop a different color glowing liquid.

Okay ... so I went overboard on the ideas. lol
Happy modding! I'll be back to see what you come up with in the near future.


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 6, 2010)

I'll think about the liquid cooling. 

First thing to do is to find a case that I'd be happy with, and would work. I'm going to hunt around on newegg and figure it out. 

On the plus side, if I do move it to a new case, I could put a real PSU in, instead of this joke of a Xbox one.


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## KainXS (Apr 6, 2010)

depending on the version you can upgrade the CPU and the RAM, it helps with XBMC playin 720p


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 6, 2010)

Oh really Kain? I didn't know that. Honestly this morning I just buckled down and opened it up, wasn't really that planned. 

I was looking for a good cheap case to put this in, and I like the looks of this one. 

Figure I'll toss in two 120mm green LED fans and decent PSU... Only thing I'm worried about is the controller ports and hooking up the power button. Going to need to bust out the soldering iron on this one.


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## Phxprovost (Apr 6, 2010)

KainXS said:


> depending on the version you can upgrade the CPU and the RAM, it helps with XBMC playin 720p



 wtf are you talking about?


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## Soylent Joe (Apr 6, 2010)

Radical_Edward said:


> Oh really Kain? I didn't know that. Honestly this morning I just buckled down and opened it up, wasn't really that planned.
> 
> I was looking for a good cheap case to put this in, and I like the looks of this one.
> 
> Figure I'll toss in two 120mm green LED fans and decent PSU... Only thing I'm worried about is the controller ports and hooking up the power button. Going to need to bust out the soldering iron on this one.



Are you sure the motherboard's screw holes would line up with the ATX/mATX form factor standoff arrangement? Also, how would you hook up the controller once it's in the case?


Also, here are the specs of it if anyone's interested. It seems most of the components are soldered in so I can't see much in the way of upgrading.



Spoiler



* CPU: 32-bit 733 MHz, Pentium III-based, custom Intel Coppermine-based processor in a Micro-PGA2  package (though soldered to the mainboard using BGA). 180 nm process.[9]
          o SSE floating point SIMD. Four single-precision floating point numbers per clock cycle.
          o MMX integer SIMD
          o 133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front-side bus to GPU
          o 32 KB L1 cache. 128 KB on-die L2 "Advanced Transfer Cache"
    * Shared memory subsystem
          o 64 MB DDR SDRAM at 200 MHz; in dual-channel 128-bit configuration giving 6400 MB/s
          o Supplied by Hynix or Samsung depending on manufacture date and location
    * GPU and system chipset: 233 MHz "NV2A" ASIC. Co-developed by Microsoft and Nvidia.
          o Geometry engine: 115 million vertices/second, 125 million particles/second (peak)
          o 4 pixel pipelines with 2 texture units each
          o 932 megapixels/second (233 MHz x 4 pipelines), 1,864 megatexels/second (932 MP×2 texture units) (peak)
                + Peak triangle performance (32pixel divided from filrate): 29,125,000 32-pixel triangles/s raw or w. 2 textures and lit.
                      # 485,416 triangles per frame at 60 frame/s
                      # 970,833 triangles per frame at 30 frame/s
          o 8 textures per pass, texture compression, full scene anti-aliasing (NV Quincunx, supersampling, multisampling)
          o Bilinear, trilinear, and anisotropic texture filtering
          o Similar to the GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 PC GPUs
    * Storage media
          o 2×–5× (2.6 MB/s–6.6 MB/s) CAV DVD-ROM
          o 8 or 10 GB, 3.5 in, 5,400 RPM hard disk. Formatted to 8 GB. FATX file system.
          o Optional 8 MB memory card for saved game file transfer.
    * Audio processor: NVIDIA "MCPX" (a.k.a. SoundStorm "NVAPU")
          o 64 3D sound channels (up to 256 stereo voices)
          o HRTF Sensaura 3D enhancement
          o MIDI DLS2 Support
          o Monaural, Stereo, Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital Live 5.1, and DTS Surround (DVD movies only) audio output options
    * Integrated 10/100BASE-TX wired ethernet
    * DVD movie playback (Add-on required)
    * A/V outputs: composite video, S-Video, component video, SCART, Digital Optical TOSLINK, and stereo RCA analog audio
    * Resolutions: 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i
    * Controller ports: 4 proprietary USB 1.1 ports
    * Weight: 3.86 kg (8.5 lb)
    * Dimensions: 320×100×260 mm (12.5×4×10.5 in)[10]


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 6, 2010)

Not sure about the Mobo lining up. But I can always drill and tap holes for it in the case. 

See the controller is one of the things I've been thinking about, in theory, if I extended the wiring on the port itself to the mobo, I could attach them to a 5.25 faceplate. I have to look at the Xbox mobo more tomorrow and do some more thinking.


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## Soylent Joe (Apr 6, 2010)

Radical_Edward said:


> Not sure about the Mobo lining up. But I can always drill and tap holes for it in the case.
> 
> See the controller is one of the things I've been thinking about, in theory, if I extended the wiring on the port itself to the mobo, I could attach them to a 5.25 faceplate. I have to look at the Xbox mobo more tomorrow and do some more thinking.



Maybe get a wireless controller and leave the receiver hooked up inside the case?


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## kenkickr (Apr 6, 2010)

Phxprovost said:


> wtf are you talking about?



You can update the proc and ram if your REALLY good at soldering.  The proc can be updated to a skt370 Celeron 1.3Ghz or 1.4Ghz and I think the ram can be updated upto 256mb.


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## ste2425 (Apr 7, 2010)

i think that case is a little overkill my self, id have some form of htpc coz i mean it'd be powerful enough to run movie and music from a wireless connection, wait a min can you hook a wireless connection upto it or does it have to be cable? im thinking of doing some thing very similar so this will be a great thread for me to kep up with on, good luck bud


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 7, 2010)

There's wireless remotes and controllers out there. Plus I like how the case I choose has built in Green LED's and Big "X"s on the side and front. I'm thinking I can mod the front of the case to say "XBOX" in green light, instead of "XION". 

This is going to be one hell of a project folks.


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## dr emulator (madmax) (Apr 7, 2010)

if you are going to try to use a pc powersupply i would suggest first doing your homework as i'm pretty sure they are slightly different connections, not really sure 

and yes them switchmode psu's can be deadly even hours after so be extreemly carefull 
best thing would be to find the ground on the cd unit and test your voltages with the psu left in place (at the connector) that way you'll be reasonably safe ,
also bear in mind their will be a 5 volt stand by voltage 
here's a little picture of most pc powersupplies 
http://pinouts.ru/Power/atxpower_pinout.shtml
with the index here 
afaik it's correct but always cross reference 
saddly i couldn't find a xbox psu diagram, maybe tommorow
oh and good luck with it


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## ste2425 (Apr 7, 2010)

Radical_Edward said:


> There's wireless remotes and controllers out there. Plus I like how the case I choose has built in Green LED's and Big "X"s on the side and front. I'm thinking I can mod the front of the case to say "XBOX" in green light, instead of "XION".
> 
> This is going to be one hell of a project folks.



I mean like wireless internet? would be quite cool


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 7, 2010)

It'd have to be cable unless you figured out a way to hook it up to a USB unit...


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## ste2425 (Apr 7, 2010)

Radical_Edward said:


> It'd have to be cable unless you figured out a way to hook it up to a USB unit...



i havent, i was hopeing you did


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 7, 2010)

I'll think about it some more, I have an idea of what might need to be done, but I need to open my Xbox back up really quick.


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## ste2425 (Apr 7, 2010)

are you going with some different dashboard? or keeping it as normall


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 7, 2010)

I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. I just got a good idea for keeping the case it's in now, that involves 1 80mm fan, and some PCI slot coolers. I'll take some photos here in a moment and explain my plans.


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## Solaris17 (Apr 7, 2010)

/ awesome loved my old modded orig Xbox wish i still had it.


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## jellyrole (Apr 7, 2010)

Should be interesting to see a good ole xbox mod! Brings back memories!


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 7, 2010)

Thanks Solaris and jellyrole. It's good to to see others interested in what I'm doing.  Jelly, you are the one who inspired me to start this mod, so I'm glad to see your watching this thread. 

Here's some more photos and ideas. 

I'm thinking I could put a 80mm Green LED fan with a grill here instead of the Xbox badge...  (I'm thinking this fan.) 












The area I have shown in red is a place I might be able to fit a PCI slot cooler. I'm not sure about this yet, I need to measure and make sure. 

The area I have shown in green is the IDE cable port. (Meh)

The area I have shown in blue is the plug for the DVD drive's power cable. 






Power button connector area/controller connectors 3-4 






Controller connectors 1-2






Power connector from the PSU.


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## Solaris17 (Apr 7, 2010)

pin out for PSU

http://pinouts.ru/Game/xbox_power_pinout.shtml


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## jellyrole (Apr 7, 2010)

Hate to tell ya this, but that fan will not fit where the badge was. There's simply not enough room!


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## Papahyooie (Apr 7, 2010)

The pins for the PSU have to be rearragned to use a regular atx power supply. Use the chart solaris or Dr Emu gave. The CPU can be upgraded to a 1.4ghz celeron, and the ram can be upgraded by soldering ram chips onto the backside of the board to a max of 128mb, however, first you must be a soldering GOD to do so (or use some flux tricks, theres a tut on xbox-scene) and secondly, you have to have EXACT ram chips, which have to be ordered in bulk, I believe. You used to be able to order them in a kit from Llamma, but I dont think you can anymore. The screw holes will NOT line up with an ATX case. You'll have to drill your own. You can extend the controller wires to dremel holes in an expansion slot (5.25 or w/e) on the front of the case, or simply put wireless dongles internally use wireless controllers. There is no way to use a usb wireless dongle, the kernel does not support it. You can, however, use any ethernet based wireless solution (like what was made specifically for the xbox, or xbox 360) or for a possibley cheaper solution, de-case a small wireless router and mount it inside the case, and run an ethernet wire to it from the mobo, set it and forget it, though you will either have to find power from the PSU, or run another power cable to it from the outside. Another idea might be Power-over-ethernet (wiki it) 
Another idea, run the cables for the controllers to USB ports on the case (the yellow wire is not used. Get rid of it.) Then take your controller breakaway cables, and splice the part that plugs into the cord onto a normal male USB. The controller uses a standard USB cable, just with a weird plug, so replace the plug with a normal USB plug, and it will work over normal USB. 

BTW, you'll have to be creative with the power button. There are some ways to do it, tuts are on the net, but alot of times they are specific to the case. Thats the hardest part of converting to a PC case.

Also, good news, looks like you've got one of the 10 gig hard drives, so you shouldnt have problems putting the mods on it with room to spare for some music or a game rip or two without upgrading the hard drive.  

I used to do this stuff all the time and for profit, so I can elaborate if you like. Lemme know if you have any specific questions, I'll see what I can do! I miss old school xbox modding, so its nice to see someone reviving it!


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## Solaris17 (Apr 7, 2010)

shit just got real dont u let us down!! this is awesome


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 7, 2010)

Thanks for the info guys. Jelly, I realized that, and I think I'm going to just stick with a black one instead of a green one.

Oh, and while you guys were typing, I was doing this. 






















I realize now that I should flip the fan around and have it as exhaust, as it's the top of the "case". 

I'm going to put a fan grill on it, I just need to find one in my parts bin. Along with that 3 pin fan.


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## Solaris17 (Apr 7, 2010)

nice man turn it into a beast!


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## L|NK|N (Apr 7, 2010)

I love mods. Good luck with it. Cant wait to see finished product!

Edit: One question though will you be overclocking it? If so I suggest using this hardware mod. Most people don't know of this awesome trick to double the frequency of the cpu on the xbox.


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## crazyeyesreaper (Apr 7, 2010)

i wonder if gaming performance would improve a bunch if you added a celeron 1.3ghz and the 256mb of ram id kinda like to see  that lol


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 7, 2010)

Very funny. 

Flipped the fan around.


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## Solaris17 (Apr 7, 2010)

LiNKiN said:


> I love mods. Good luck with it. Cant wait to see finished product!
> 
> Edit: One question though will you be overclocking it? If so I suggest using this hardware mod. Most people don't know of this awesome trick to double the frequency of the cpu on the xbox.



hahaha DICK


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## L|NK|N (Apr 7, 2010)

is there zero clearence between the shell and the drives?


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 7, 2010)

LiNKiN said:


> is there zero clearence between the shell and the drives?



There's some, but barely any sadly. But I can live with the fan like this. 











Fan grills! I don't need no stinkin' fan grills! (Works fine, and the exhaust air still has room to escape.)


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## jellyrole (Apr 7, 2010)

That make it any louder?


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## Radical_Edward (Apr 7, 2010)

Nope.


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## Papahyooie (Apr 7, 2010)

I'm assuming the link is not what it is supposed to be? At work, and can't see it. 

No, games will not work if you upgrade the processor. As a matter of fact, the stock kernel doesn't work atall. Upgrading the CPU and ram is only for xbox-linux.

Edit: on second thought I did hear something about them patching the kernel to accept it for dual boot purposes, but games will see no improvement from the processor or ram upgrades. They are coded to run specifically on the stock hardware.

Oh, and if you want, there is a way to mount the fan that works out pretty neatly. You can remove the casing of the fan to where all you have is the motor and blades. Glue or w/e the fan to the frame that holds in the DVD drive through the hole in the top (since there is no clearance under the case) Then glue the jewel to the spinning part of the fan (being careful, and testing to make sure it is PERFECTLY centered) Then when you turn on the xbox, the jewel spins with the fan. They called it the spinner mod back in the day.


Oh and sand off the back of that jewel and paint it another color. That nasty green color is the worst mistake microsoft has ever made, beating out even windows vista in recent polls.


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## Soylent Joe (Apr 7, 2010)

I just had an epic idea. You should mod out an Xbox 360 case to fit the Xbox's components into


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## ste2425 (Apr 7, 2010)

maybe make something to go around the fan, like cut a bit of pipe the make it perfectly round, round the fan?


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## KainXS (Jul 18, 2010)

just did mine with a cpu heatsink to make it completely quiet


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jul 18, 2010)

Back in the prime of the xbox 1 you could buy premodded xboxes with double ram and or the cpu upgrade. They had a flip switch so that you could toggle between 1.3 GHz and the stock clock as some games would run too fast at full speed. The ram only helped for linux.


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## arnoo1 (Jul 18, 2010)

Radical_Edward said:


> There's some, but barely any sadly. But I can live with the fan like this.
> 
> http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f282/Renagade_Recon/281e1e13.jpg
> 
> ...



+1 mate fann grills only make noise and it does look like shit

but nice mod hopefully  it does it's job





Radical_Edward said:


> I'll think about the liquid cooling.
> 
> First thing to do is to find a case that I'd be happy with, and would work. I'm going to hunt around on newegg and figure it out.
> 
> On the plus side, if I do move it to a new case, I could put a real PSU in, instead of this joke of a Xbox one.



 do you own a xbox 360?
if you do it would be great that you put in a normal case(antec made a case special voor xbox360) en than some liquid cooling


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## Radical_Edward (Jul 18, 2010)

It works fine, I haven't used my Xbox much since this mod thou, since PC gaming > Crappy Xbox graphics.


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## KainXS (Jul 19, 2010)

I thought you used xbmc on it . . . . .


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## Radical_Edward (Jul 19, 2010)

KainXS said:


> I thought you used xbmc on it . . . . .



I don't even know what that is. 

I don't use it whatsoever of late, it's sitting in my closet and I only keep it around for Xbox LANs.


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## KainXS (Jul 19, 2010)

my old xbox, don't use it much but its still fun to test stuff in, put a cpu cooler in it to see if it worked before I try something similar for my 360


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## p_o_s_pc (Jul 20, 2010)

i was working on watercooling my xbox a few years back.I had it in a clear case with some UV CCFL's but the PSU died so i just threw the xbox away and threw the idea out with it


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