Also, if your Elite died why would they give your a Holiday bundle? I know retailers are stupid but Best buy is usually one of the few smarter ones, probably would've gotten it from Wal-mart though.

LoserMike

Because that's the way thier replacement plan is structured. It goes by value and purchase price at the time the warranty was purchased. I don't even need to trade it in on another 360, I could call up the voucher line, send in the 360 and they would give me a store credit card worth 479.99. I could then go in and buy whatever I wanted.

I've done this several times over the years with different consoles. I did this with the PS2, it broke, I went in and even though I had the old full bodied black console, the new thinline one was out in Silver and there was a store exclusive RE 4 bundle of that console, When I bought the old black one, it was like 199.99, when it broke the silver bundle was like 149.99, so I not only got the bundle and new silver console, but I got the difference in price of $50, which bought me a brand new replacement plan on the new console, and I still got a $20 gift card to cover the rest.

That's why I always buy the BB replacement plans for video game hardware, because they always end up being worth it for me. I'll go in and get a new Falcon Elite, bundle or not, and because of the price drop since I bought it, I'll get 30 bucks off a new replacement plan for another 2 years.

Hope that your 360 gets the 3 red lights and MS sends you a new 360.

If you're really crazy you can modify your 360 into a liquid cool 360, they sell kits online, the fans won't bother you anymore. Though you'll void your warrenty.

Another one is to modify the 360's DVD-drive, as that is one of the main reasons why the 360 is excessively loud. Click this link to learn how to quiet the DVD-drive.

LoserMike

Firstly, for the TC, if you even consider doing any of these, consider that your throwing away every penny that you spent on your 360, and whatever money and time you spend on these mods. All of them obviously void the warranty in an instant, but the truth is, is the system is not reliable enough in any regard to make any of these mods worth it, unless money is absolutely no issue for you and you just want to play around.

If you water cool it, it takes care of the overheating CPU and GPU, but there are more than enough hardware issues with the HDDs and DVD drives to question whether or not you'll even get a year or more out of your liquid cooling efforts before one of those units needs to be replaced.

That last mod is a flat out terrible mod. Your voiding your warranty and getting nothing out of it. 4 db is almost nothing in the real world, in a normal household or room, it's not like your going to get it done and go "Wow, I really notice a difference" it's be minor at best.

Plus, I know people who have done that mod, and in the long run it's very harmful, because all that Dynamax or whatever sound deadener you use in there takes up precious space that is badly needed for airflow. Heat has a harder time escaping on top of the hardware assembly and below it, so it just hangs around the DVD drive and GPU area, and because the drive case is wrapped in Dynamax, the case loses a huge amount of efficiency as a heat sink to remove heat from the drive. Anyone who has taken out a hot to the touch disc out a non modded 360 should realize this is a very bad thing. You may slightly quiet down the 360, but you risk motherboard overheating or DVD drive failure down the road, and I doubt that website bothered to do a long term study on that.

I'm not knocking the poster that suggested them, because that's what the TC asked for, where suggestions, but I just think people should be informed before doing these mods.

My Elite died a few days ago, and yesterday I took it into Best Buy, thinking I would try and get a bundle with Forza and Ultimate Alliance, and try and get a new Falcon system, but when I went in, they had no Elites or Premiums with the bundles, they had no Elites at all, so I had to hold onto my broken console for now, but the Premiums they had, where just the regular consoles, not the Holiday bundles.

I noticed Amazon is out of stock on them, and Best Buy lists both bundles as being online only and not available in stores. I know this was a limited time deal, but I atleast expected them to use the promotion through Christmas, not the beginning of December only.

Anybody know if the promotion is ending already, or is this just a shortage issue for certain retailers?

What model of 360 do you have? And when was it manufactured? It shouldn't just get louder all of a sudden.

The new Falcon consoles with BenQ drives are signficantly quieter than any of the 360's made before it, but you if you have one of those and your still complaining, then your in for trouble, because that's about as good as it gets.

It depends on the lengths your willing to go to silence it down a bit. There are very few things you can do to quiet it down without compromising it's already questionable reliablity. The only thing I have seen that works well and doesn't hurt reliablity is a fanbox shroud. I'm not sure what they are actually called, most of the ones I have seen are homemade, but there was a place that used to custom make them but they got kind of expensive.

You can make one for 30 to 40 bucks, and it quiets it down a whole lot, and if you do it right it reduces the heat build up too. It's kind of labor intensive though, probably a couple hour job and a little shopping involved. If it sounds like something you want to tackle if the noise is bothering you that much, PM me and I can walk you through it or you might find some plans by doing some searching.

Yes the new hardware using the 65 nm process is called "Falcon"it's a new motherboard revision, new cooling system to better take advantage of the new heatsink that has been in use for a while now, and several other changes. Only the CPU and the E-DRAM are 65nm though, the GPU is still using the 90 nm process, supposedly that won't change until August of 08 or later.

If you find a console made in say November, you should be safe, but depending on what model you buy, you can't really use manufacturing date as a super reliable source, even using assembly team name and batch number isn't a certain bet. The LE Halo consoles where the first to get the new revisions, and they supposedly started with batch 734 and around the end of September.

The best way, and only 100% surefire way to know if the console is a Falcon without taking it out of the box and looking at it more in depth, is to use the power supply information which is the last line or two at the bottom of the white sticker that is on the side of the console box. The old 90nm units are all 203 Watt power supply units. The new 65nm units are the only ones that have a 175 Watt power supply due to thier lower power needs.

There are supposedly 65nm consoles out there with 203 Watt power supplies, but there are no 90nm units out there with 175 Watt PSs, so that's the easiest and most certain way to do it.

[QUOTE="murlow12"][QUOTE="shadow0205"]ok i just remmember seeing on gamespot in the headlines thing that they were making like an ultimate 360 that had everything built inshadow0205

oh wow lol ok nvm i geus im getting an elite then :P

It's not happening period. This whole rumor started because somebody had what they believed to be a source that had Microsoft and I believe Toshiba coming together and already working on this new super 360 that would be out my mid 2008. A few weeks later though this was almost completely torn to shreds.

Toshiba came out and crushed the rumors by saying that there was absolutely no truth to any part of that rumor and that they were not working nor did they have plans to team up for such a system. There was also something about there being problems with cost or something about building a HD DVD drive that would have to spin 12 or 16x to play the 360 games.

Microsoft has also stated that they have no plans for either incorporated HD-DVD or WI FI, they have said at various times or atleast hinted at not wanting to commit to a HD media format because it isn't necessary for the console and they don't like the possiblity of being on the losing side of the format war if they do commit.

I think Microsoft's commitment to IPTV sort of takes this rumor down a peg too, between thier HD movie download service that is constantly expanding, and the possiblity of IPTV, why would they need or want to install an HD DVD drive into the console, they don't make money off of HD DVD sales, but they do off of every HD movie rental off of Live, and you can bet your ass they will make a pretty penny off of IPTV service too.

I've heard of lots about the old Xbox titles not working efficiently on the 360, but am considering getting a 4 for £20 offer at my local gamestation. Im thinking of getting:

Halo

Fable

Ninja Gaiden

Star Wars: KOTOR.

I've heard all these games are awesome (never played them) but the most important part of all: DO THEY WORK?

magic_dragon

Halo is pretty much perfectly emulated, there are next to no BC issues with either Halo game.

Ninja Gaiden is pretty solid, there are a few hitches here and there, but it's highly playable.

Fable is mediocre, Lost chapters especially, for some reason, there can be some pretty terrible slowdown and glitches that I have noticed.

Sadly the best game of the lot you mentioned is the worst for BC on the 360, KOTOR is not good, the framerate was a bit sluggish on the original Xbox, but with BC, it's downright terrible at some points in the game, and it's way too buggy, sometimes button presses don't register and weird stuff like that. It's not completely unplayable or anything, but it can be a chore at times.

Nice list though and if your looking to get some original Xbox games to take a trip down memory lane on the 360, your getting a good scope there.

I got my Elite on Launch day, Sunday April 29th. In the little more than 7 months since, it had operated pretty much flawlessly. It froze up on me 1 time where I had to reset it, but it was on an original Xbox game and I think it was more to do with a BC issue than it was anything else. No RROD or anything.

That is until 2 days ago, when the horrendous piece of crap known as the Hitachi DVD drive finally died on me. It had been sounding horrible for a month or so, making this loud almost grinding sound and shuffling for data constantly, but in all that time, it never gave me a problem, never gave me a DRE or failed to do what it was asked, but it did die.

I knew it was going to be trouble when I heard that the launch Elites got that crappy Hitachi drive. The loudest and least reliable of the three brands in the 360s. I also found it to run louder and maybe even hotter than my January of 06 Premium that I had owned up until I got the Elite without issue.

I'm gonna try and get a Falcon Elite with the BenQ in it now, so we shall see how that goes. If I get one of those, and it fails on me in any way within atleast 18 months or so, then I don't know, I'm going to be pretty upset with MS.

Xbox 360 is still very warm on all the consoles. The hardware was not really good from the get go. When you need to buy an aftermarket cooler to stick on the back there is a problem.

Most people that got the 360 at launch have had some kind of problem with their xbox.

Xbox 360 hardware needs to improve. The power brick is ridicilous. I mean come just install it inside the console, but noooo they had to make the console a small as possible so it will appeal to the japanese market.

I wish the hardware was like the original xbox. Yeah it was bigger, but not one hardware problem. Besides the recall on the powercable.

I am still waiting on a cooler quieter xbox 360. Maybe one that has hd-dvd already in the system, and wireless adapter attached to the back of the console. That will be the day.

LaNoOm

You sound like you have no clue what your talking about.Buying an aftermarket coolerespecially the Niko intercooler is one of theworst things you can do to the 360. Also, you praise the original Xbox, but maybe yourforgetting that a massive number of the systems made in the first year or so suffered an incredibly high DVD drive failure rate and had to be taken in for service or replaced.

What do you meanby"Still very warm"? When? What console are you talking about? You don't even own one according to your profile. I'm not asking about a launch console or one that was made 6 months ago. I've had a premium from launch and an elite since it launched in april. I'm specifically asking about the new Falcon 360s.

Only the Falcon 360s use the new power supply, and only the Falcons have the new motherboards with 65nm CPUs and memory, and only the falcons have the new redesigned cooling and other parts, so unless you specifically have a 360 falcon which has only been manufactured since the last week of September or there abouts, or you have played one made on or after that time frame that has the new power supply, then your comments are irrelevant.

I try to be environmentally friendly when I can. I use hi quality rechargeables whenever I can. When I first got my 360 way back in January of 06, I used rechargeables, but for some reason, the 360 controller is incredibly fussy about some rechargeables. I only use known brand stuff, no budget batteries, usually Energizer, Duracell, Sony or a couple of high quality Japanese import batteries that are higher durablity and charge holding.

The controller loved the Energizers, but the Sonys, Duracell and one of the other brands, it always gave me problems, it would start flashing and telling me the batteries where dead, even though they were brand new, fully charged and worked great in anything else I put them in.

I switched to a Play n Charge, and I have not looked back. depending on the game, I get upwards of 25 hours or more per charge, with the rumble, which is just about as good as my PS3 Sixaxis with no rumble. When it's low I just grab the cord plug it in, and the red light comes on to tell me it's charging, when it's green, it's done and I got another 25 hours of play time. The 360 will even go into it's auxilary mode to continue to charge the battery pack when you shut the console off and the battery is not charged. Then when it's charged, the console will shut down completely. Like the download standby function. In that regard, it's an even better battery pack and recharge system than the PS3.

In almost 2 years, I've spent 18 buck to buy the kit, and that's all I've ever spent on batteries for my 360. There is no good reason not to use a Play and Charge Kit.