Which XBox 360 3 Red Lights Repair Option is Best For You?
Everything is going great. You're in the "zone". Your X360 is purring beautifully. Than WHAM!. Everything stops. And I mean everything. The game freezes. And you notice that the familiar ring of 4 steady green lights on the front of your xbox console has suddenly turned into 3 flashing RED lights and 1 green light. Welcome to the club no one wants to join - the XBox 360 3 Red Lights Club (aka the "Red Ring of Death Club").Your gaming has come to an abrupt, disheartening halt. You reboot the system a few times, but to no avail. You're stuck. Your Xbox 360 is dead in the water.
The XBox 360 3 red lights problem is a hardware failure that has occurred in over 30% of early manufactured X360's (the problem has largely been fixed in newer XBoxes, but there are thousands of older units out there still susceptible to the problem). Those 3 red flashing lights indicate a hardware failure caused by overheating inside the GPU (general processing unit) of the XBox 360.
Here's the short version of what has happened. When the engineers designed the xBox 360 they didn't design in enough cooling to dissipate the tremendous heat generated by the various high performance graphics chips that create the X360's stunning graphics. They relied on cooling holes drilled into the XBox case (hot air rises and is replaced by cooler air). Unfortunately, depending on where you installed your XBox 360 (on deep carpeting, inside an entertainment console, etc.) the hot air may have had no where to go. So the result is damaged chips, weakened solder joints and generally and overheated mess inside your XBox. So now you know how the "Red Ring of Death" occurred, what do you do?
Well, the big picture solution is that your XBox needs improved cooling capability. If you're really luckily (and few are), moving the XBox to a more open area will clear up the problem (after you've let it cool down for at least an hour).If you're NOT really lucky, here's a quick rundown of your options...
1. Microsoft implemented an extended 2 year warranty specifically for the 3 red lights problem. If you're within that 2 year window, contact Microsoft's XBox 360 support line and schedule a return to Microsoft for repair. If you do anything else, you'll immediately void your warranty. You don't want to do that.
2. If you are out of the 2-year warranty window, you have a few other options. If you're not the do-it-yourself kind of person, your best bet is to send your Xbox 360 out to a third party repair services. They'll charge around $40-$50 and have it back to you in a week or so. You can find several of these services on eBay.
3. If you don't mind fixing things yourself and want to be back up and running in an hour or so, check out the downloadable XBox 360 3 red light repair guides available from any of a number of websites. Just type in the "Xbox 360 3 red light repair guide reviews". A little skepticism helps here as many of these sites are little more than glorified advertisements for a specific guide that the website owner sells as an affiliate. In other words, their "reviews" aren't exactly "objective". In any case, most of these guides now come with step-by-step videos. You can practically do the entire repair without even looking at the manual.
Good luck and happy gaming!
