Gaming Getting a 360 soon..

[Rock Raiyu]

So I'm getting a 360 soon and I'm confused on a couple of things, especially since I want to flash it. So I have a couple of questions.

1. What do I need to flash 360 fw? (I heard you need a sata cable but at the same time, I hear other places say different things so I'm confused.)
2. What's the difference between an Silver and a Gold XBL account?
3. If I buy an Elite/Pro, do I need to buy a headset, or does it come with it?
4. Anything that I need to get the most out of the 360? (accessories?)
5. Is it dangerous to flash a 360?
6. Anything else I should know?

That's all I can think of right now. Thanks for all that help and reply!

 

[Sir-Fritz]

Gold xbox live allows you to play online. Silver only allows you to download stuff and only having to wait a week for it to be gold exclusive, silver can also play online for gfw games.

 

[Prime]

1) A flashable 360 drive, some time, knowledge on the subject and the correct chipset on your computer motherboard...or a some special PCI card...(someone else will help you on that one, I don't know anything on that sort of stuff since i got someone else to flash mine for me)
2) see Sir-Fritz's answer
3) A headset comes with the pro and elite. So no you dont need to buy one.
4) Unless you are intending to hook it up via ethernet, a wireless adaptor to get on xbox live. other than that i think no.
5) You can "short" your 360/computer mobo but if you ground them then you are fine. If you follow a guide right down to the smallest detail then you cant go wrong.
6) You will most likely get a lite-on. The lite-on has been cracked and now is flashable but the tools/firmware/how to isn't available yet... and the guide i said wont help you if you want to flash your lite-on.

 

[Rock Raiyu]

So Silver accounts let me play online but I have to wait a week to play online games? How can I check to see what kind of motherboard I have, take off the case and look inside to see if its compatible?

 

[754boy]

So Silver accounts let me play online but I have to wait a week to play online games? How can I check to see what kind of motherboard I have, take off the case and look inside to see if its compatible?

No, you can't play online at all with Silver accounts. They have free Gold weekends from time to time but if you want the full experience, I suggest springing for a Gold account, its worth it.

And to check and see what kind of mobo you have, you could open the case to see lol or you could just use the program CPU-Z and it'll tell you all that info too. It's free.

 

[Rock Raiyu]

So Silver accounts let me play online but I have to wait a week to play online games? How can I check to see what kind of motherboard I have, take off the case and look inside to see if its compatible?

No, you can't play online at all with Silver accounts. They have free Gold weekends from time to time but if you want the full experience, I suggest springing for a Gold account, its worth it.

And to check and see what kind of mobo you have, you could open the case to see lol or you could just use the program CPU-Z and it'll tell you all that info too. It's free.

Ok, I'll use CPU-Z then...

 

[MelodieOctavia]

Also, what has been found is the only SATA ports compatable with all Xbox 360's (not sure about lite-on) is PCI Sata card with VIA6421 chipset

 

[Armadillo]

Nforce sata controllers are as well , not just via.

 

[rush57]

some tidbits of info:

On flashing- you need to open up the 360 and hook it up to your computer via sata cable. You are more or less flashing the dvd drive so it reads 360 backups. 360s come with different dvd drives and thus requiring different program to flash the drive correctly. You should go and read up on that to determine what dvd drive you have. popular flash firmware is ixtreme

On risk of flashing dvd drive- well microsoft usually console ban people off of xbox live in droves before the big fall update like the one last month or so. I don't remember the criteria on how microsoft determined how they banned users. There are a lot of mixed results for the reasons and speculations on why certain people with flashed drives got banned and some didn't. One of them being, people playing leaked games early on xbox live, but others reported that they didn't get banned. Some were saying that one scene group made a bad rip/bad stealth patch of the game and got caught that way. One person said he had a 360 to play offline with backups and when he went to check if he was banned and pow his console was already banned. So if you want to test your luck go right ahead.

On the peripherals- Last i checked the ELITE one comes with 120gb hard drive which is really good for installing games onto it so the 360 doesn't make a lot of noise while playing games. Also comes with a hdmi cable and a headset. From what i've seen only the elites and pro comes with a headset.

On xbox live- Silver is free, you can download stuff like pictures and themes and garbage like that. Gold you can play online, download junk, and access the netflix feature which i am not sure it is working outside the U.S. due to licensing issues.

Overall its a good time to pickup a 360 because of the new chipsets that is rolling out called "Jasper." Which has better heatsinks, so there will be less Red Rings of Death for folks.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

Oh, and just accept if you play games on xbox live, or play early releases, you WILL be banned, so ask yourself if its worth it before flashing your 360.

the best mindset is if you get it flashed you will be banned eventually, theres no escaping it, and if you do for a while then thats awesome.

 

[Rock Raiyu]

Oh, and just accept if you play games on xbox live, or play early releases, you WILL be banned, so ask yourself if its worth it before flashing your 360.

the best mindset is if you get it flashed you will be banned eventually, theres no escaping it, and if you do for a while then thats awesome.

Yes I know. I'm quite aware of that.