360 Slim turns off to prevent red ring

[Guild McCommunist]

A listing of the differences between current models of the Xbox 360 and the new black one announced at E3 last week revealed that the new systems would no longer be able to give the Red Ring of Death. More specifically, it lacked the red light around the power button to display the error; it's not that the system is necessarily invulnerable to suffering the issue.

But the new 360s are smarter about trying to avoid a potential RRoD-style death -- if the system isn't properly venting, the power button will turn red and the system will shut itself off in order to avoid any serious damage. It'll display the message you see above (via NeoGAF, Engadget) which explains the situation and informs you that the system can be turned back on once the power light has stopped flashing.

It might be somewhat annoying to have your 360 shut off on you in the midst of a play session, but that still seems highly preferable to ending up with the Red Ring of Death and being unable to play for a few weeks while your system is off at Microsoft being repaired.

Source

Yeah. I still like the whole "keep in a cool, dry place" method.

 

[iFish]

Yeah. I still like the whole "keep in a cool, dry place" method.

I keep my PS3 on the pool! is that dry enough

Well.... if this is software... shouldn't the old 360 do it aswell..... i don't think hardware makes this do it.

Or maybe that added a heat sensor. who knows

 

[Crimsonclaw111]

It's about time.

 

[monkat]

Yeah. I still like the whole "keep in a cool, dry place" method.

I keep my PS3 on the pool! is that dry enough

Well.... if this is software... shouldn't the old 360 do it aswell..... i don't think hardware makes this do it.

Or maybe that added a heat sensor. who knows

Well, it's obviously software that turns it off if it displays a message like that, but if they could have added it to the old iteration, they would have, so I'm sure they added a heat sensor.

 

[tk_saturn]

The 360 has been through several iterations, I really can't what would have stopped them from adding a heat sensor to the Falcon or Jasper.

Unless they are able to determine the air resistance of the processor fan from the RPM etc in combination of heat of the processor.

Or they could have heat sensors measuring the temperture of air being drawn into the case, rather than the processor temperture. Then have a sensor measuring the exhaust temperture, and it could compare the difference.

 

[Theraima]

Now they'll die when theyre powered down

some kind of error when they are shut down itself XD

 

[iamthemilkman]

The older PS3's also did this. Not sure about my Slim, though.

 

[Deleted-247497]

shouldn't all 360s have heat sensors so the fan knows when to turn on?

 

[gameboy13]

This is pretty neat. Too bad they already implemented something similar in laptops and desktop PCs.

 

[luke_c]

This is pretty neat. Too bad they already implemented something similar in laptops and desktop PCs.

How's that a bad thing?

Great to see Microsoft actually attempting to solve the issue for once, my 360 Slim buy is starting to get even more justified!

EDIT: Ninja edit

 

[Goli]

I always turned mine off when I wasn't using it, so i guess I wasn't tthat concerned about it.
But I don't have a 360 now so I don't care

.

 

[Uncle FEFL]

The older PS3's also did this. Not sure about my Slim, though.

I'm sure they all do. It's a nice feature.

 

[Skyline969]

This is pretty neat. Too bad they already implemented something similar in laptops and desktop PCs.

Yeah, if mine gets too hot it just shuts off without telling me. Without saving anything. REALLY helpful if I'm, say, typing a huge essay for college.

I'm glad this at least tells you it's shutting off for that reason, and you don't have important work on an Xbox 360. C'mon, being in the middle of a match in BC2 and MW2 is NOT important work.

 

[Deleted member 35947]

The older 360s have heat sensors in them. Freestyle Dash is able to show several temperatures such as gpu, cpu, ram and so on. It'd be very easy to have it auto shutdown through software after a certain threshold has been met.

 

[tk_saturn]

This could still be something different from the PS3.

The fan is either directly sucking in or blowing air out of the case. If the ventilation is not sufficient, the RPM on the fan will be lower. The Slim could be able to determine if there is insufficient airflow when it powers on from the RPM of the fan.

It does explicity mention insufficient ventilation in the error message. Also read the text in the background of the image.

 

[kamins]

The non slim 360s do shutdown but only when temperature is above critical, without a warning and leaving you with two blinking red lights.

 

[omgpwn666]

Microsoft is so weird to release a console in the first place that they knew would break often, I'm sure when they were testing they ran into a couple of hardware fails and released anyways. I have a Xbox 360 that I play and enjoy but it's the fact they did that confuses me and I'm sure it confuses some others, hard to make money with a bad name. On topic now, good call on the automatic shut downs, their should be a lot less complaints about red ring of death now since the consumers know it's their fault if it breaks (since it's due to bad ventilation... Or is it!?).

 

[DeltaBurnt]

This will most likely just piss off most of the people trying to play their Halo 3 or COD for 12 hours straight.

 

[RupeeClock]

Theoretically, isn't the shutdown totally unnecessary?
All it should take is to temporarily halt CPU processes and activity, and let the CPU cool off. Then you can resume gameplay.

Seriously my PC's CPU idles at 36c and works at 52c under load, and it cools off very quickly. As soon as activity stops the CPU drops to 42c.

Better yet, actually educate your consumers about CPU temperatures and proper operation, and put a temperate meter on the dashboard, that will solve so many problems.

 

[raulpica]

...like heating was the real problem of the RRoD!

Heating is normal, and every electronic thing out there creates heat. The problem lies in the PCB materials and the BGA solder.

Sometimes I really think that even MS doesn't know why the RRoD happens

They should've just used DECENT materials and production processes, and nothing like that would ever have happened in the first place.