Back in the SNES days, the worst thing you had to worry about was your console getting a suntan. Now, it's all RROD this and YLOD that. It seems like everyone knows someone whose console broke on them. Remember all the fuss recently over Mattel selling toys that may have contained led from Chinese factories? Well ever since then, everyone has been trying to go "green and clean" and not including toxic things like lead or PVC in their products.
Unfortunately for consumer electronics, including video games, this means using lead-free solder when assembling our consoles. Why is this bad, you might ask? Because the lead-free solder is much more brittle, and when it's frequently re-heated and cooled by a console's processors, it starts to crack. When the motherboard warps due to prolonged heat exposure, this can cause the connections between the GPU and the motherboard to break, resulting in the red rings of death on the Xbox 360 or the yellow light of death on the PS3.
If console manufacturers were to treat us like adults and assume that we won't let our toddlers open up our game consoles and put their mouths all over the circuit boards, they would be using high-quality lead solder which can bend and flex with the motherboard without breaking their connections. There are some third party repair services that will replace the solder on your console for you, however these services cost a fair dime, and it doesn't change the fact that the companies are giving us poor quality products that will not stand up to years of use because of a stupid, minor problem.
Microsoft lost billions on replacing faulty Xbox 360s when they could have just flipped off Green Peace and used good solder. Now, pretty much every console this gen, whether it's a fat or a slim, PS3 or Xbox 360 is more or less a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, no matter how well ventilated or dust free your gaming area is. Eventually the solder on your GPU is going to be compromised, and you're going to have to either have the system replaced or fixed. I think it's a shame that we've all accepted such poor quality craftsmanship this generation as being a fact of life, and that manufacturers waste so much of their customers' money (and their own) repairing consoles that should not have broken in the first place.
I'm all for keeping TOYS non-toxic, but game consoles are not toys for toddlers. Not using lead solder because it's toxic is like not using batteries because they contain acid, and I think that it's high time console makers wisened up and gave us products that are built to last rather than built to break.
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