Xbox 360 Two Red Rings | Tinker Mods
Xbox 360 overheating
Unlike the one and 3 red rings of death, the two red rings only means one thing, overheating. To start off, having the two red rings isn't always caused by a hardware issue. Sometimes those 15 hour game sessions just cause the Xbox 360 to overheat. If this has happened to you one, maybe two times, I wouldn't worry about it quite yet. Especially if everything goes back to normal after letting the console cool off. If this is a persistent issue then we have some work to do. Luckilly almost all these repairs can be taken on by anyone. If you can use a screwdriver, you can give these a try. So let's dig right into it.
That Xbox 360 is DIRTY!
I'm going to start with the simplest fix first. It is VERY common for your Xbox 360 to overheat and get the two red rings if the console hasn't been cleaned in a long time. So to start we need to open the console. Check below this for a video tutorial on how to open your Xbox 360 console. If you have the S or E models, the cleaning aspect of this stays the same, but you will need to open the console using a different tutorial
After opening your Xbox 360, we need to focus on cleaning the insides. Specifically the heatsinks and fan area. The large metal objects in the center of the console are the heatsinks. If these are caked up in dust, air will not pass through them. Thus, preventing the exhaust fan from cooling. Not only that, but getting two red rings on an Xbox 360 can be made even worse as the dust can help areas to retain heat even more than they would otherwise. That dust will act like insulation. You will need an air compressor. (Keep the air below 75PSI) A can of air duster from any general store will work as well. Blow all the dust out of the heatsinks and the exhaaust fan. While you're at it blow every bit of dust out of the Xbox 360 as you can. The more dust you get out of there, the less overheating.
No fan = overheating = two red rings
If cleaning the Xbox 360 didn't help, your next stop is the exhaust fan itself. We need to make sure it's working properly in the first place. Is the fan loud? Does it make noises other than the sound of the blades moving and pushing air? In fact, do the fan blades move at all? If you have the phat Xbox 360, the console has a dual exhaust fan, sometimes one fan can function and the other doesn't keep that in mind while checking the fan for for functionality. If for any reason the fan doesn't function correctly, then this would be the reason your Xbox 360 is getting two red rings. Replacing that fan is relatively cheap and easy to do, So go get yourself one!
Thermal compound and the GPU/CPU
This next fix is a little more complicated. Fair warning, make sure you are very careful with this part. You can accidentally cause damage to your Xbox 360 if you are careless handling the motherboard! The GPU and CPU chips are attached to those heatsinks we cleaned earlier. In between them is something called heatsink compound. This compound transfers the heat from the computer chip to the heatsink and dissipates the temperature away from the chip itself. If that heatsink compound isn't transferring the heat well, you're going to get the two red rings on your Xbox 360. For this you will need some rubbing alcohol, Q-tips, A razor blade (Advanced and skilled individuals only) as well as new heatsink compound. Check below for another video tutorial on how this process works.
Last things to try
If you tried everything in this article but still have an overheating Xbox 360 with two red rings, Then it means you have a much larger problem with the GPU and CPU chips. This means you may have cold solder joints or damage caused by the overheating itself. This would require one of three processes, a reflow, reball, or replace. For most people this kind of fix isn't possible. It requires equipment and extensive knowledge on how that works. If you got to his stage you can do further resarch on using these methods to fix your two red rings. But you may want to consider replacing the motherboard instead. This my require a little soldering depending on what version you have. Replacing the motherboard is way easier (and even cheaper) than performing those kinds of fixes.
