41 ms·

Consoles have design lifetimes, and thermals are part of the computation that helps you figure out if your components are going to last as long as the warranty.

by kabdib 5y ago

Consoles have design lifetimes, and thermals are part of the computation that helps you figure out if your components are going to last as long as the warranty. Obviously, if you run a chip hot, its service life will be reduced. So companies develop models that tell them how long things like the SOC (main chip with CPU, etc.) will last for a given temperature and use frequency, and whether or not they've got a 1-year design on their hands, or one that will last 20 years. The model improves as you gain experience with manufacturing, customer issues, and get more testing than you could do before launch. Making the systems too beefy can be expensive, and saving pennies really matters when you're making millions of units. So I imagine that the folks at Sony determined they could get away with a smaller heatsink and still have an acceptable fleet failure rate, probably a year or two out from the posted warranty.

xxpor 5y ago
Hopefully the industry has improved their estimates since the Xbox 360
- fragmede 5y ago
  Starting with the original PlayStation in 1994, nevermind all of the other hardware Sony makes since way before that, they just might have a bit more experience making consoles than Microsoft did in 2010 with the 360. (though to be fair, the original Xbox was released in 2001.)
- samhuk 5y ago
  I can't get a source for this right now, but I remember having a very intriguing conversation about heat issues and the xbox 360 years ago. I was talking to an old colleague of mine that was an electronics engineer, and apparently, the issue with the xbox 360 was that the heat inside the case made the solder a bit more softer than expected. This would not be an issue for a horizontally positioned xbox 360, but when placed on it's side (which a lot of people did), this caused extremely slow shifting of certain components on the motherboard towards the direction of gravity. After (for most people) a few years, certain components would shift enough to not have proper contact with the board. I was offered the analogy of the long-standing pitch viscocity experiment - everything is technically a liquid, just to wildly different degrees. Not sure if this is true though, it was many years ago!
  - qubex 5y ago
    > I remember having a very intriguing conversation about heat issues and the xbox 360 years ago Lucky you. I can barely remember conversations I had in the mid nineteenth century.
    - samhuk 5y ago
      1661 is the mid seventeenth century, however that joke was timeless.
  - mattius 5y ago
    Yes this was absolutely true. I used to repair these systems when they got the dreaded red ring of death. Microsoft used inferior solder, and coupled this with a poorly designed heatsink mounting bracket. The heatsink mounting bracket on the back of the motherboard was bowed by design, and would pull back on the corners of the CPU, while a middle contact point would press up on the center of the CPU socket. Once heated, this caused the motherboard to flex directly under the CPU, and this stress would pop the ball grid array solder points under the CPU. The trick was to place a stack of nylon bushings at each corner of the CPU, to take up the free space after removing the bracket. This removed the stress from under the CPU and would usually bring the system back to life for another eight months or so.
    - samhuk 5y ago
      Surely the best countermeasure to worsening of the issue would be to advise people to place the xbox 360 horiztonally, no? This would mean no more stress. I'm intruiged as to why it would only work for eight months, why wasn't the fix "permanent"?
      - mattius 5y ago
        The position in which you placed the console was a separate issue that caused the same failure. The stress from the mounting bracket was a bigger factor. I tried looking for a good visual example and this article describes the issue, and fix, pretty well. https://www.instructables.com/Fix-the-Red-Ring-of-Deathwithout-towels/ https://www.instructables.com/Fix-the-Red-Ring-of-Deathwitho... The fix would only last so long because once a ball grid array looses connections there is no real fix. It takes very special equipment to create those connections in the first place. If you search "ball grid array soldering" on YouTube you'll see what I'm talking about. They're a real pain to try to fix once broken.
- coryrc 5y ago
  The first Xbox One was huge with a big fan. My guess was being absolutely sure the first revision did not have thermal issues, but I never asked.
- halo37253 5y ago
  When the 360 was in its preproduction phase Microsoft used Lead based solder. It was what the industry at that time was using. Microsoft didn't notice a problem regarding heat in these units simply because lead based solder is much kinder to heat cycles. EU at this time put a deadline to the end of use for lead based solder, so the move to leadfree solder was done right before moving to mass manufacturing. The poor cooling solution on the 360 compared to its heat output didn't do the system justice. The PCB would flex as it would not be heated evenly. After Die shrinks and manufacturing revisions, more mature lead free solder also used. The Jasper units were pretty much tanks, and the cooling solution was oversized as they were the same as before with the much hotter and power demanding lager die first gen chips. Video Cards from the era of the launch 360 are notoriously unreliable for the same reasons. Heat cycles were a death wish, luckily for videocards they normally had a cool down period after gaming idling at a desktop. While the 360 would commonly go from 100% load term load to off.
numpad0 5y ago
Also, cost saving like this always had been normal with consoles. It goes back at least to PS2. This is just an expected news.

by kabdib 5y ago

xxpor 5y ago

Hopefully the industry has improved their estimates since the Xbox 360

fragmede 5y ago
Starting with the original PlayStation in 1994, nevermind all of the other hardware Sony makes since way before that, they just might have a bit more experience making consoles than Microsoft did in 2010 with the 360. (though to be fair, the original Xbox was released in 2001.)
samhuk 5y ago
I can't get a source for this right now, but I remember having a very intriguing conversation about heat issues and the xbox 360 years ago. I was talking to an old colleague of mine that was an electronics engineer, and apparently, the issue with the xbox 360 was that the heat inside the case made the solder a bit more softer than expected. This would not be an issue for a horizontally positioned xbox 360, but when placed on it's side (which a lot of people did), this caused extremely slow shifting of certain components on the motherboard towards the direction of gravity. After (for most people) a few years, certain components would shift enough to not have proper contact with the board. I was offered the analogy of the long-standing pitch viscocity experiment - everything is technically a liquid, just to wildly different degrees. Not sure if this is true though, it was many years ago!
- qubex 5y ago
  > I remember having a very intriguing conversation about heat issues and the xbox 360 years ago Lucky you. I can barely remember conversations I had in the mid nineteenth century.
  - samhuk 5y ago
    1661 is the mid seventeenth century, however that joke was timeless.
- mattius 5y ago
  Yes this was absolutely true. I used to repair these systems when they got the dreaded red ring of death. Microsoft used inferior solder, and coupled this with a poorly designed heatsink mounting bracket. The heatsink mounting bracket on the back of the motherboard was bowed by design, and would pull back on the corners of the CPU, while a middle contact point would press up on the center of the CPU socket. Once heated, this caused the motherboard to flex directly under the CPU, and this stress would pop the ball grid array solder points under the CPU. The trick was to place a stack of nylon bushings at each corner of the CPU, to take up the free space after removing the bracket. This removed the stress from under the CPU and would usually bring the system back to life for another eight months or so.
  - samhuk 5y ago
    Surely the best countermeasure to worsening of the issue would be to advise people to place the xbox 360 horiztonally, no? This would mean no more stress. I'm intruiged as to why it would only work for eight months, why wasn't the fix "permanent"?
    - mattius 5y ago
      The position in which you placed the console was a separate issue that caused the same failure. The stress from the mounting bracket was a bigger factor. I tried looking for a good visual example and this article describes the issue, and fix, pretty well. https://www.instructables.com/Fix-the-Red-Ring-of-Deathwithout-towels/ https://www.instructables.com/Fix-the-Red-Ring-of-Deathwitho... The fix would only last so long because once a ball grid array looses connections there is no real fix. It takes very special equipment to create those connections in the first place. If you search "ball grid array soldering" on YouTube you'll see what I'm talking about. They're a real pain to try to fix once broken.
coryrc 5y ago
The first Xbox One was huge with a big fan. My guess was being absolutely sure the first revision did not have thermal issues, but I never asked.
halo37253 5y ago
When the 360 was in its preproduction phase Microsoft used Lead based solder. It was what the industry at that time was using. Microsoft didn't notice a problem regarding heat in these units simply because lead based solder is much kinder to heat cycles. EU at this time put a deadline to the end of use for lead based solder, so the move to leadfree solder was done right before moving to mass manufacturing. The poor cooling solution on the 360 compared to its heat output didn't do the system justice. The PCB would flex as it would not be heated evenly. After Die shrinks and manufacturing revisions, more mature lead free solder also used. The Jasper units were pretty much tanks, and the cooling solution was oversized as they were the same as before with the much hotter and power demanding lager die first gen chips. Video Cards from the era of the launch 360 are notoriously unreliable for the same reasons. Heat cycles were a death wish, luckily for videocards they normally had a cool down period after gaming idling at a desktop. While the 360 would commonly go from 100% load term load to off.

numpad0 5y ago

Also, cost saving like this always had been normal with consoles. It goes back at least to PS2. This is just an expected news.