Cooling Off the Xbox 360

If you have a 360 or have been reading up on them, you know that there are numerous complaints about how hot they are. They’re hot. One hacker has joked that he’s going to do an E-Z Bake Oven/360 mash-up mod. Hey d00d, it’s been done (sorta). Rather than cook bit-sized snack treats on their boxes, most gamers would like to cool things down. It’s doable, but as this tutorial shows, it’s rather involved, requires you to do some serious hacking up of your hardware, and it ain’t cheap. This cooling system, centered on the Thermaltake home theater cooling unit, costs some US$300. And what you’re left with is a very Frankensteinian looking game console with a big silver box next to it. So much for J. Allard’s elegant gesture of the iconic in-breath.