Yes, Microsoft has extended their warrenty to 3 years, costing them $1.15 billion, but now they've admited that all the consoles had the red ring problem. Pretty much, it's a cooling problem. When the system gets too hot, the CPU breaks connection from the board resulting in the 3 red lights. We shall see what else Microsoft will do with this big problem.

Last week’s announcement of an extended, three years warranty for Xbox 360 was just the beginning of Microsoft’s mea culpa saga: recently, Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Redmond allegedly admitted that every console sold out there is suffering from design flaws that could eventually lead to the red ring of death.

Australian site CRN reports that Microsoft’s official informed financial analysts during a conference call of the design flaws that affect the Xbox 360, which have determined the high return rate. Apparently, all of the 11.6 million consoles reportedly sold by the end of June have this undisclosed issue, but Microsoft has taken the necessary steps to fix it.

"In the past couple of months we started to see significant increases in repair requests and call requests and significant attention from people," he said.

Despite keeping quiet about the design flaw that determined a return rate of up to 33%, Microsoft confirmed that consoles that are still in stock will be upgraded soon and that all customers with red-ring-of-death problems are entitles to free repairs and shipping, for the entire three-year warranty period. Microsoft estimated that the costs for this program will reach $1.15 billion.

A man who has had 8 consoles fail so far explains what he believes the issue with the hardware is.

"... the problem isn’t just with launch units. Of the 8 I’ve had so far, only 2 were manufactured in the first three months of launch. The last one I had red-ring on me was manufactured in November of ‘06 - a full year after launch.

The problem is that the cooling design of the 360 doesn’t hold up. The cooling of the CPU was well done, with a heat pipe to draw the heat away from the chip (and accordingly, away from the mainboard). The problem is that the GPU and its low-profile heatsink sit under the DVD drive, and are given a very narrow channel for air to be pulled across the heatsink by the fans. When the GPU heats up enough, not only does it reflow the solder in the ball grid array slightly, it can cause the entire mainboard to flex - a phenomenon largely caused by the X-shaped brackets that hold the heatsinks on under the mainboard. They hold the heatsinks down to the chips with a tension fit that presses up directly underneath those chips.

So when the system gets too hot, the combination of loosened solder with a mainboard that flexes from heat causes the GPU or CPU to actually break its connection from the board - resulting in the 3 red lights and secondary error code 0102 (the “unknown hardware error” code).

This is true of ALL systems manufactured thus far, not just the launch systems. Hopefully, Microsoft’s new measure of adding a heatpipe to the GPU heatsink will reduce the heat on the mainboard itself enough to keep this from happening. We shall see."

Synergized via efluxmedia.com »