Author Topic: 360 Slim Fan mod Tutorial (Noob-Solder friendly)  (Read 7704 times)

Offline F4LL3NH3ART

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360 Slim Fan mod Tutorial (Noob-Solder friendly)
« on: February 04, 2014, 07:03:02 PM »
Hey guys, Today I'm going to be showing you how I did my 360 slim fan mod.
Please note that if you use a 120mm fan then you will NOT have room for your dvd drive, although this doesn't affect me, as my case mod will have a separate shelf type thing for my dvd drive to sit on inside the case.


Okay, on to requirements;
1x Large PC fan (120mm for me) I used 4 pin molex fans for this, it made it much easier.
2x Smaller fans (I used 40mm)
1x Hot glue gun
1x Soldering iron


Start by disassembling your xbox,
I will not be covering this as there are thousands of tutorials on this.
Alright, now you want to take your stock fan, and unplug it, take off the old fan shroud.
Cut the red and black wires as close to the fan blades as possible to give you some length to work with,
As for the Yellow and Blue wires, one is a sensor which just observes the fan spinning, and the other throttles the speed of the fan, as these are both now useless, you can cut these off,
if you don't wish to cut the wires, a good tip that Rodent posted in his tutorial on modding your fan to run at 12v was that if you take a small screwdriver, you can pry up the plastic tabs and simply pull the wires out.
I recommend cutting the red and black though to give you more room to work with.


Next, You want to take a look at the fan you have, if you are using molex powered fans as I am, All you need to do, is observe the numbers of the pins on the plastic casing of the male molex connector (1234)
Your First pin is your 12V(HOT) and the second pin is the Ground (GND)
The 120mm fan I chose had its own speed control switch, but seeing as we are modding it for the purpose of cooling, it would be redundant not to have it on high at all times.
If you aren't very experienced at soldering, I recommend twining the wire into a loop, heating up the pin first and then touching it with solder, it makes it alot easier.
Red to 12V(HOT)
Black to Ground (GND)


Alright, now give it a little test, you will have to lift up the fan initially to stop the blades from hitting that heatsink where the old fan was.


Attach the fan to the casing using double sided tape, it doesn't vibrate, and it holds strong. as an added measure, you could use a piece of dowel or something similar to hold the fan up in case the double sided tape fails, however, I have had mine taped for months with no slip ups, and it is also in an awkward position to put a post of sorts underneath it.

As an additional step, I found out that the main airflow was coming under the dvd drive and up to the old fan, but since I didn't have my dvd drive inside the consoles shell, this gave me an opportunity to move some stuff around...
I took the internal speaker out, cut off the plastic tabs and mounted it on the top of the frame with double sided tape


If you are using 4 pin Molex fans like I am, they commonly have a male and a female connector, so you can essentially run one off the other off the other and so on. (You can also see the little speed selection switch I spoke of earlier double sided taped to the side of the fan)



Next I used a hot glue gun to stick two 40mm fans together, similar to the xbox elite style cooling fans I suppose,
I then cut a roughly 40x80mm hole in the mesh, I did this by using a drill to make a larger hole, then used tin snips to cut all the way round.
These fans Are intake fans, they pull cold air into the console, and then the main fan pushes it out.
If you use brushless fans like I did, you will find that it can make a very annoying noise that is quite loud, from the fans vibrating on the metal, you can counter this with rubber, I used an old bike tube.


As you can see, this is the finished result.
I have no means of checking the temperature my consoles running at, but I can tell you now it only emits cold air, and has never heated up, even after 6+ hours game time, so it's pretty damn cool in there

[EDIT] Hot glue can be used to secure wires down and keep things tidy!


I hope this helps/inspires you guys to do some awesome projects, please let me know how your project goes and if this tutorial has helped you!
Thanks
« Last Edit: February 04, 2014, 09:46:20 PM by F4LL3NH3ART »

Offline 3D0kassiah

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Re: 360 Slim Fan mod Tutorial (Noob-Solder friendly)
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2014, 07:15:12 PM »
good sh!7 on the mod but in all reality does it need it?
owned quite a few slims etc never had any heating issues more like drives issues etc
im assuming since watercooling would be a novelty more then anything for slims
Tracey: f off Rodent
rodent:i would of flew it to bill gates and shoved it up his a$$

Offline F4LL3NH3ART

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Re: 360 Slim Fan mod Tutorial (Noob-Solder friendly)
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2014, 08:20:50 PM »
I found my slim getting really hot after playing games that really stressed out the gpu to the point where I couldn't pick it up, which was really annoying, because I always took it to my girlfriends house and it would be too hot to pack straight away.
It even got to a point where my xbox started randomly turning off and on.
Since I've done this mod I've never had any hiccups and it never has any heat coming from it whatsoever,
It also stopped crashing on high rounds of zombies which used to irritate the hell out of me.

Watercooling was impractical as I couldn't find any blocks made for it and this mod only ended up costing me maybe $12 for the two fans?
The red fan was a spare.
The only problem with the xbox's fan, is how the software uses it. watercooling would be a waste of money and time for minimal results.

Offline Rodent

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Re: 360 Slim Fan mod Tutorial (Noob-Solder friendly)
« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2014, 12:54:17 AM »

 Tracey: I cant believe Rodent of all people made my damn day
3D0: snacks cartoons and naps  lol sounds like rodents typcial day :rofl:
Rodent consoles mods

Offline F4LL3NH3ART

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Re: 360 Slim Fan mod Tutorial (Noob-Solder friendly)
« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2014, 02:07:01 AM »
Definitely, Don't get me wrong, your method is great too and definitely quicker, however when I tried doing your method, and I did try it believe me (hence why I mentioned you earlier)
However my 360 when I did your mod slightly worried me a bit because for some reason it kept slowing down randomly, I have no idea, I think the fan was dying.... hence why my console was so hot.
Either way what I have done may not have been time efficient, this is a long tutorial because I wanted to make it in depth, but in real time it took about 30 mins including the time it took to cut the hole.
It's hard for you to see just how efficient it is because I have no way of measuring the heat, I shall invest in some soon... But believe me, It was worth it.. plus you have to account for the fact that my combo case will have 2 consoles in it so "too much cooling" is impossible.

 

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