Hacking Replacing thermal paste on my RGH Jasper, what are these two wires?

[blazingwolf]

Im trying to do some preventative maintenance on my system. I did not RGH this console, nor do I know how.
Before I remove the heat sink, what are these two wires that run under it? I don’t wanna break the mod so I don’t know what these solder to.

 

[DinohScene]

They're wires for RGH points on the board.
You can clean the console and replace the thermal paste, as long as you keep those wires in place.

 

[blazingwolf]

Thanks, are they attached to pins on the CPU or the mobo? Paranoid I could pull something when removing the HS.

 

[Roamin64]

They cannot be "attached" (you meant soldered) to the CPU itself , because the CPU / GPU are BGA (ball grid array) which means all their pins are under the chip , and cannot be accessed. They are soldered to the motherboard. You can safely remove the heatsink.

 

[FAST6191]

They cannot be "attached" (you meant soldered) to the CPU itself , because the CPU / GPU are BGA (ball grid array) which means all their pins are under the chip , and cannot be accessed.

Going slightly off topic and being a pedant I do have to note you can reach out and touch pins on a BGA -- some hackers doing such things used little hooks inside sheaths (think sprung hook probes for a scope)and snaked them through the gaps until they get where there need to be and then unfurl them. Can even be done for semi permanent installation rather than just sniffing data one time.

 

[blazingwolf]

Thanks, are they attached to pins on the CPU? Paranoid I could pull something when removing the HS.

They're wires for RGH points on the board.
You can clean the console and replace the thermal paste, as long as you keep those wires in place.

Do you have to remove the front panel where the red/green lights appear near the power on button to get the motherboard out? I’m lifting gently but nothing. I also removed the two screws but can’t get that power button faceplate off.

 

[godreborn]

the rf board (ring of light) has three screws iirc.

 

[blazingwolf]

the rf board (ring of light) has three screws iirc.

I see one in the top left an right and then a black push through pin on the other side, so I just push that through? Worried about breaking a connector but I don’t see any type of cable or port behind this RF chip.

 

[godreborn]

the rf board should come out very easily. I assume you haven't unscrewed the third screw, since you mentioned only two. it's been a long time since I've opened up a 360, and then it was only phat ones (never owned a slim), so I'm basing this on memory.

 

[Roamin64]

Going slightly off topic and being a pedant I do have to note you can reach out and touch pins on a BGA -- some hackers doing such things used little hooks inside sheaths (think sprung hook probes for a scope)and snaked them through the gaps until they get where there need to be and then unfurl them. Can even be done for semi permanent installation rather than just sniffing data one time.

Sure that would be possible , but I personally have never heard of any modchip that relied on going under a BGA chip with such hooks or other means. I'd like to see such projects/hacks but right now I'm too lazy to hunt google for such info. I would assume that if anyone is serious enough about probing a BGA chip that he would unsolder it , and resolder it with a man in the middle pcb between.. routing out the pins that he would like to probe.

 

[FAST6191]

Sure that would be possible , but I personally have never heard of any modchip that relied on going under a BGA chip with such hooks or other means. I'd like to see such projects/hacks but right now I'm too lazy to hunt google for such info. I would assume that if anyone is serious enough about probing a BGA chip that he would unsolder it , and resolder it with a man in the middle pcb between.. routing out the pins that he would like to probe.

For anything going wide I have only seen it for edge balls (I was not paying attention so much to what it as much as "that is cool" so I think it might have been a TV/cable hacking thing), and that was mostly a one time sniffing or basic injection. Hooks and whatnot is more of a group of hackers feeling out a system. As for probing a BGA then breakout/MITM board is probably the easier method but first things first you check to make sure there are no debug points or some kind of boundary scan type debug technique (somewhat amusingly in a conversation like this then JTAG being the main one) -- for the debug points then with the noise issues of modern high frequency boards then they often leave them in lest they have to redo RF or solve a new crop of noise issues.

If you want to get crazy lab style then you can also do things like https://www.networkworld.com/articl...-used-to-secure-xbox-360--other-products.html

 

[blazingwolf]

Well, I figured it out, there was a screw behind the plate that is removable. I was able to replace the thermal paste with high performance grossly thermal paste. I’ve done this on PCs many times but I was nervous to do it on the 360, fired right up, custom LEDs and all and it seems my problem was fixed, thanks guys!