Thanks everyone for your patience this past month. This was kind of a quick video to conclude the Xbox Saga, and also get something out since I was sick for most of July couldn't record much as a result. But I've got some huge stuff in the works that I can't wait to show you all. Stay tuned!

I’d like to point out the passive heat sink likely wouldn’t have worked because the two chips are probably not level with each other

You could probably 3D print some fan ducts like what they have on servers, and use the existing heatsinks. Those would guide the air to flow directly over the heatsinks

“Ultimately it wasn’t a length issue, it was a girth issue” Yeah, I have that problem too

I installed a hydro fluid bearing fan (aka Hydro dynamic bearing) and set it to 100% speed. I just can't remember if it was a 70mm or 80mm fan. Over 10 years now of use and the fan is still silent and keeps the Xbox cool. You should look into these types of fans instead of using the basic ball bearing fans if that's what you are using to set it at such low speed on the fan so you don't hear the noise. At 100% with these types of fans it is very silent and effective.

"Are you tired of this Xbox yet?" "No" "Too bad binch" "Oh"

I think it's possible, that the DVD drive might also have a little to do with the airflow, like with the HDD caddy, perhaps, you could try putting just the bottom of the drive back in and seeing if that improves Temps? That would only make it a little bit heavier, but might help (especially with the gpu heatsink)

The SSD in my Frankly Horrific OG Xbox is held in with Gorilla Fabric Tape. Absolutely no clue how it’s held up so well with the heat.

I'm a little confused, since you didn't like how the DVD drive cover no longer "floats" why didn't you leave the DVD drive in with its caddy and just have it disconnected? This would solve the soft whirring you were annoyed by. This would also allow the air flow to go back to what previously was the case and if you ever did want the DVD drive you could plug it back in (relatively) quickly.

MattKC: "The double sided tape for the SSD didn't work due to heat, I probably should've seen that coming" Also MattKC: "I used double sided tape for the Xbox logo, it doesn't go through anything so it should be fine" I don't actually know if that part of the case gets any airflow/hot, but I just thought it was funny :P Good work though, hopefully someday I'll do the same to a PS2!

With the amount of space you have, you probably could fit a 2U cooler in there that would be a step up from the cooling you have right now. Suggest checking out some of the dynatron products for 2U server kit.

I highly recommend getting a bag of 20x20x10 mm heatsinks off ebay and some thermal epoxy (or at least an adhesive thermal pad) and putting one of them on the MCPX chip next time you're in your Xbox. It's right next to your modchip and it gets pretty damn hot. Due to easily hitting peaks of over 60 C in some situations and just generally going through some rough thermal cycles in its life, it's responsible for a lot of Xboxes dying. I am not sick of this Xbox- thanks to these videos I ended up buying myself a new one to replace my recently-FRAGged childhood 1.1. I hit pawn shop gold and ended up with a seemingly barely used 1.1, manufactured 4 days before my old one, with a stealth modchip already installed. I went for the exact opposite approach to this Xbox. 500GB IDE Caviar black, modified Wii2HDMI, heatsink on the MCPX, and for the ultimate in jank Xbox mods, I cut a hole in the plastic on the left side of it and zip-tied a fan to the metal chassis, pointed straight at the MCPX. It's loud as all fuck. I don't care, I have headphones. I watched my 20 year old Xbox die last year, and I don't intend to allow the same fate befall this one. Thank you for the inspiration Matt

I would advise against relocating electrolytic capacitors willy-nilly, as they are often used for local decoupling and may well contribute to rare, obscure failures. Datasheets for most ICs will specify as short a length between decoupling caps and the Vdd/Vcc pin as possible. You can probably be more lenient with how long your connection between the negative terminal and ground is.

You could also add a noctua 40mm on top of the cpu ? Airflow might still be good enough for the "OG" fan to work as an exhaust. And the noctua 40mm are dead silent at correct speeds

What an intro lol, legit made me laugh. Thanks Matt for making entertaining videos and teaching us in the process!

I'm not sick of these videos. I love them. All 3 of my xboxs have failing drives, so I have them lined up, ready to do these sorts of mods on all three at once. I'm glad I waited this long!

I would advise that you still use the DVD tray/caddy in the Xbox. Even though the DVD drive is gone, it still provides support inside the console. I would also suggest modifying the tray in some way to help guide air over the heatsinks.

Cool video! Have you considered a 128MB ram upgrade? I don't remember if that specific Xbox is a 1.6 or not but do know that it is possible to RAM upgrade a 1.6 now. Anyways, I think it would be cool

3D print ducting for controlled air flow so you can remotely mount the fan this way you can use a larger fan at a lower speed. You just need to minimize static in its design (minimal turns and narrowing). A fan doesn’t need to be mounted directly on or even near a heat sink they are just sold that way for cost and convenience. If all of its air flow is ducted over the item trying to be cooled you get the same effect. Much like how duct work in your home cools and heats the rooms without the furnace fan being in that room. I really wish I had an Xbox because looking at yours I’m visualizing a really interesting fan location that pulls air across the entire board but directs all of it over the CPU and GPU before it exhaust.

The Noctua L9 cooler you reference at 8:11 actually blows the air DOWN, because it was designed to also cool the VRMs and associated components around a CPU. Depending on the clearance to the top shell of the Xbox it could still struggle to intake air, but it would exhaust quite happily around the board and get sucked out the back.

I looked into doing a combined Heatsink for both GPU/CPU in the past but each die has a different Z Height, so you would need a shim to adjust the height between both dies to get proper thermal contact.

I'm honestly amazed by your patience. A while back I meant to replace the bulging caps in my Xbox v1.6 but getting them out was so much of a hassle (my soldering skills are dreadful and I don't have a proper solder pump) that I just kind of... gave up. Anyway, great video, love to see Xbox content!

I once had a low profile HP PC, and a tunnel was put on top of the top facing fan, solving the side outlet issue. :) You can print such tunnel easily with a 3D printer :)

I love the whirring sound of the PS2 and Xbox, combined with the startup logo sounds it's such a nostalgia trip :)

Nuts, gerth? Snipping? Bent Legs?? This one had some innuendos, eh?

Good to see sponsors that's related to the content! Make's them completely bearable. :D Also about the cooling, too bad you couldn't use a fan that's a lot like those found in a PS2 Slim... 🤔

Tbh I’d be all for watching some videos of you trying to watercool your Xbox. Tho as a retro game collector, seeing you remove the disc drive hurt 😭

"I knew The thicker ones should fit, but just incase they didn't, I got a 1 level thinner too" * checks the comments *

Not too common to have a "girth" issue.

I was rewatching all of your videos. perfect timing!

only issue i see is that dvd drive had the same effect as the hard drive cover it helped airflow on the gpu heatsink, now that it is removed its likely running much hotter. i would suggest making some sort of cover or something to help direct the airflow.

It looks like there would be enough space to ad an intake fan, it certainly could help with temps. and as others have mentioned, fan ducts would be another way, to increase airflow over the heatsinks more effectively.

to cool your components, what you can do is use the noctua cooler you showed off and 2 noctua 4020 fans on the side of that cooler, blowing the air through the width of the cooler like you wanted it. it would cost some money because noctua, but it would preform like noctua.

One thing you could consider doing is using liquid metal thermal compound on the CPU. You can't mix liquid metal and aluminum though, so you'd have to nickel-plate the aluminum heatsink.

Hey dude, I just wanted to say that I checked out your music after it showed up on an end card and I gotta say that you've got a damn good voice. I didn't know what to expect but your really good at singing

yk matt, thank you for making content. there's something so soothing and relaxing about your videos, they just make me feel like all is well, hope you have a great day

1:19 all five pegs are missing their center pin.

I love MattKC, I've been fiending for a new video. Always so much fun to watch. Also, it's been shown that you can double RAM now on ANY OG Xbox, if you're interested in trying it :D

For future reference a wood chop saw will cut aluminum. I recommend squishing the blades into some soft wood, or filling the gaps with some wood, and just chop it slowly. Then you would get the benefit of a taller heatsink.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love when ingenuity is involved in your videos. I don't think anybody's tired of the Xbox I think we are all interested in seeing how we can make it better. So thank you

Matt, if you haven't tried it I think you might enjoy using 3M VHB tape in some of your projects. It's strong enough that it's used for attaching dash cams to windshields, yet removes cleanly.

I actually really enjoy the Xbox videos. I'm pretty big into Xbox modding myself. I especially enjoyed the HDMI mod you did.

Careful with passive coolers, they assume you have convection based cooling, which wouldn't work for you either.

i wonder if server heatsinks could make a good fit in that space.

I've done a low profile cooler, but I also cut ventilation into the top of the case, since the one I had picked up for modding had already been damaged anyway. That xbox ended up just being a case that I converted into a mini-itx pc case, and I transplanted the actual xbox bits to a new case of one that was water damaged beyond being worth repairing.

This is so cool I appreciate these vids man!

Hey Matt. Love your videos etc. In my car, there's a few plastic pegs/screws that hold various plastics in place (I think I'd bought some for my car a long time ago from AutoBarn, but they can probably be found elsewhere?), maybe those could work in place of those pegs here? It's a long shot, but maybe that might help...

Hnng, please, this is your best series so far, watching you struggle with that green boy makes for great content! Please look in to server cpu coolers like Dynatron T318, and please just move those caps. Or replace them with smaller caps, and solder them in so then have long feet to move them far away. They do sell heatpipes on Mouser and other places, you can bend them, and they can move the location of the cooler

The best way to learn cad for 3d printing (I use fusion360) is to jump into a major project and break it down into smaller pieces. Watch a video or two on the basic features like UI navigation, and basic sketches, and joint components to create one big assembly of all the smaller parts you designed.

0:02 "are you sick of this Xbox yet? Too bad, bitch!"

I refuse to believe the saga is over until you add the 4 extra RAM chips.

Thank you for all of the Xbox videos!

there is a 3d print floating around for the fan and the dvd tray front panel, also if you haven't seen it yet there is a 128MB ram upgrade for 1.6 Xboxes. and evoX titan will support hdd's up to 16TB! and using a startech ide adapter you can use the UDMA 5 option for titan making boot times even faster! but titan only works on 2TB+

The Noctua cooler would have worked if it fit, mounted, and made good contact. You can remove the fan from the top, and keep the regular system fan, and that will still give you a similar airflow pathing, just with a lot more surface area. The GPU likely wouldn't be able to contact it, so it would still need its own heatsink. The heatsink it has would probably still fit under the Noctua finstack, if not you could try to mesh its fins together with the Noctua finstack and see if that will transfer enough heat into the bigger heatsink to matter.

Great video, I would say you can 3D print a fan holder for a noctua 60mm fan which is on thingiverse & you can also 3D print a bezel holder which can screw into the dvd holes 😉. Some have also 3D printed a shroud for the heatsink so that it pulls air closer to the gpu.

What if you used an impeller? That would be low profile and would easily fit in the case. You often find impellers in laptops and such where you have a really tight form factor

Removing the DVD drive and opening up all that space, likely reduced the air movement in the unit as well. Probably offset the difference by properly sealing the fan, otherwise, you may have had even hotter temperatures, without increasing the fan speed further. The drive is fitted to help with wind tunneling for airflow.

I expected the whole video to be about the SATA to IDE adapter alone, but I didn't expect the focus to be MORE than just that! Good mention about removing the optical drive, though I still wanna keep mine due to...unforeseen circumstances. Though I wanna see more. Try upgrading to 128MB ram and a Tualatin Pentium 3. I ain't tired of seeing the Xbox until you have done absolutely everything there is to do.

Yes midnight club 3. Legendary.

The hard drive caddy is part of the cooling system.. it directs airflow over the cpu heatsink. Without it, the fan can’t pull air over the heatsink

Have you heard of, or are planning to do, the internal mod for the OGX360? I have seen designs to allow mounting and connecting it inside of the console. Having a USB port mounted in the crevice beneath the power button, with the OGX360 having daughter boards that allow the use of the original controller ports or the OGX360. Even saw a different version of it that has the Arduino components all on 1 board.

I enjoyed this saga very much. Next chapter : 3D printing. What ? Anything that could fit in there. An airflow guide ? Hardrive caddy that take the whole space and add that little thing that might help keep the Xbox logo in place ? An empty shell to replace the dvd drive ? The future of this Xbox is limitless.

Thanks for another video about xbox. I really like your videos. Some suggestions for future xbox saga videos would be 128mb ram upgrade for v1.6 xbox which is now possible, a 3D printed shroud cooling duct (maybe retrofit the x360 phat cpu xenon heatsink, dunno if possible), and perhaps the holy grail P-III 1.4GHz CPU upgrade.

Now that the DVD drive is out, there is lots of room to mount a big cooler there. Something that is offset. Something nice with heatpipes to get all those Watts over there.

Wow!! I love your videos so much! This is a great start into my morning

A custom copper heatsink for each die would be better, you could get the same size and shape but better heat flow. Also having an extra tiny hole in the side of the case can mean a little extra air intake which could reduce temps

I will never be tired of this xbox

I'm loving the format of this video with the post-action commentary!

Would love to see building the ultimate Dreamcast next!

matt's the only channel i stay for the result instead of skipping because of how good his commentary is to me or he's just charismatic

What SATA adapter did you use. I got the one that is widely recommended but still takes a while to boot.

What "heatsink grease" did you use? I wonder if using a high quality thermal compound would help your temperatures - something like Arctic MX-4 or similar - along with enough of it to give good coverage of the CPU and GPU cores. That and using a 70mm fan with a better noise profile so you could run it at 100%.

My old Xbox had a problem where the heat sink got disconnected and my Xbox overheated and it never turned on again

0:04 this is amazing

Plastic pegs like that are used in car interiors sometimes, although often larger. But I have seen some that size. An automotive store might have them

Love your videos Matt!

Hi Matt! I love these Xbox videos and I don't mind you making them.

I used a 80mm Noctua in mine. You need to break the bottom tabs and cut a bit of the HDD holder plastic to make it fit, but being a much bigger fan it has no trouble with airflow, and being a Noctua it's dead silent. I once replaced all the original heatsinks for 50mm old style round copper GPU coolers with fans, had to remove the black plastic piece that hold the original heatsinks too. They worked, they kept the xbox cool, but since I had to hold them in place with screws washers and nuts, that put pressure on the motherboard and it bent. (that's why the fat X360 uses the metal "X clamps" to hold it's coolers in place) Absolutely not worth pursuing that. Keep the original heatsinks, apply and GOOD thermal paste like MX-4 or Kryonaut, and upgrade the fan(s).

could always add an intake fan on the side panel, hide the breathing holes in the grooves of the outer chassis, that could create an air channel to drop it by 5 to 10 ish degrees

Best way to do thermals is cut the disk tray so an 80mm fan fits. Then, you should also reverse the fan so it pushes air through the heatsinks and it will lower temps by a lot. Can also try pressure optimized fans in this configuration. I did this on my very early Xbox and managed to run it without the GPU fan it had. Used a PC chipset cooler with bent fins to fit. You already have that on your model. I wouldn't recommended removing the DVD drive since it directs airflow. Just disconnecting is better.

I love the og xbox content btw. Would never get bored of those videos!

I love this channel. I rarely have any idea what the hell is going on, but it's kinda like ASMR for me. Just his voice and passion is enough!

I snip out the metal grate that the fan pulls air through to help reduce fan noise an improve airflow.

matt, coulnd you use a second fan, a small one like 4cm x 4cm blowing air on the heat sink? some of this fans are quieter if you undervolt them, that would help with the extra heat

I was hoping to see a journey into the magical wilderness of immersion cooling. A fish tank, some pebbles, a little castle, and a whole lot of mineral oil!

You're really lucky the pan head screws didn't affect how the heatsink seated against the chip. Although since youre having an issue, maybe double check you are actually getting proper contact. Try your old fan and see if the Temps change back. Perhaps use a ir cam or laser thermometer to check the heat sink temp and compare against a stock box. It's funny that I stumbled across this, I just completed my mod and upgrade last year and I still have ptsd from it. Did you do the ram upgrade too?

all i wanna know. does this xbox pull in and thru the heatsinks and the fan blows it out? or does the fan blow the heat from the sinks into the rest of the xbox?

New mattkc upload!! Brightens my day

you can buy brackets for the DVD drive that have been 3D printed to allow for a second hard drive in place of the DVD drive if that's something you want?

As for the higher temperatures, could it simply be that the quieter fan moves less air / has less static pressure?

What ide to sata adapter did you end up going with? I can only find the one that leads to a 40 second boot time.

Great video but just remember plastic lugs were likely used to stop a short on the Faraday cage.

Put some small fans on the factory heat sinks can you swap the dvd drive board with a working dvd drive?

Glad you got the issues sorted.

Hey Matt, maybe someone already mentioned this, but you could 3d print a bracket to mount your dvd face plate (or even 3d print a DVD faceplate with embedded bracket).

hello Matt wouldnt those HP Pavillion slim centrelink looking cases work XD, the heatsink in those are low?

Do you have a link for “the better IDE adapter?” I have the same extended boot time with my current IDE adapter and would love to fix it as well.

Saying the saga is over is just jinxing yourself.

I was not expecting that intro asdfghj

Which SATA to IDE adapter did you upgrade to? I also have the slow startup issue.