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How bad are the non-slim xbox 360's?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "how bad", but if you're looking at purchasing one used, I wouldn't risk it. I'm a 360 fan but the pre-slim models are a crap shoot. If it's not DOA at purchase, the chances are high that it will be soon.
 
Yeah, .... no.

360 fats, even the various later revisions, were all fairly unreliable. The causes are complex and sort of irrelevant here, but suffice to say that the risk isn't worth it. To make things worse, with a used one it might be one that failed and was already repaired, and those usually re-fail within a much shorter timeframe than the original failure.

If you want 360, get a slim for sure.

Are you just talking about playing through the SP games and not interested in MP? Buying a used boxed 360 slim, playing it, then reselling it shouldn't lose much $ for you as long as you sell it before the XB1 hits. When the XB1 hits, 360 prices are going to hit the floor (a la PS2 after PS3 launch).
 
I wouldn't buy a non slim 360 especially not used. I own both and the Fat is loud sounds like a blower, freezes sometimes, slow, and had many red ring on me whereas my slim is quiet and i have never had any problems with it.
 
The Jasper revision was the first reliable fat 360. Before that you had a very high failure rate, high noise level, and some DVD drives that etched circles into discs making them unplayable.

I'd hesitate to buy even a Jasper for more than ~$50 though, since it will be over 3 years old.

If you do get a 360 I'd also recommend picking up Crackdown 1, it was a lot of fun. 2 was much weaker.
 
Trying to use a fat 360 is sort of like playing Russian Roulette. My old 360 that I bought back in... 2006 (?) still works even after RRoD X-clamp repair, but I know people that have gone through multiple 360s. Someone else gave me a 360 because they couldn't fix it. It didn't die from a RRoD, but rather from a messed up update. The best part is that Microsoft told him that he had to send it in... and pay for the repair. I figured it out in an hour, and I have no experience with 360 software. Good job, Microsoft. :colbert:
 
Of the several people I know with an Xbox 360, almost none of them own a white one. The are ticking time bombs.

There is a reason why the Xbox One looks overdesigned with cooling (and likely better validation of chips). They absolutely cannot have another RRoD situation on their hands.
 
Between my friends and I we had:
3 RROD on first release white units, 1 of the 3 was on a replacement unit for one of the other units
1 RROD on an updated "Falcon" white unit
1 video failure on a black Elite
 
As far as I know the "Jasper" units which were the last of the fat 360s are reasonably reliable. I know its anecdotal but I've have my Jasper 360 Arcade for over 3 years now without an issue.
 
If someone is offering you a 360 Fattie, make sure it's a Jasper board. The 150W power brick will give it away. The only bad thing about it is that there's no built-in wifi, so if your router isn't nearby just get a 360 Slim which has built-in wifi. The Slim is substantially more quiet than the Fattie. About the same as the PS3 Slim.

I've gone through, in order, the Xenon (RROD), Zephyr (RROD), Jasper (which I sold) and Valhalla (current one, Slim). The Jasper iteration is pretty much RROD-free. I sold my Jasper after 2 years and got a Slim since the wifi adapter was unsightly.

@ Aikouka

We did an x-clamp repair with better thermal compound (iirc we used Arctic Silver 5 on both) on my Xenon and Zephyr waaay back. Both didn't last 6 months post-repair.
 
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Had a launch 360 and the dvd tray would randomly not close and got rrod twice, traded it into gamestop, avoided 360 for a couple years, got a refurb slim, and it's been great. Definitely get the slim.
 
Mine died after about 4 years of relatively light use.

I think the only game I really played for hours on end was Mass Effect.

Well- I guess it's technically not dead. Ir powers up, but freezes with spots after a minute or two.
 
dagamer34 said:
Of the several people I know with an Xbox 360, almost none of them own a white one. The are ticking time bombs.

There is a reason why the Xbox One looks overdesigned with cooling (and likely better validation of chips). They absolutely cannot have another RRoD situation on their hands.
Click to expand...

Yeah.

It's ugly as hell though.

The 360's design was pretty inspiring. Unreliable and impractical, but inspiring.
 
effowe said:
I have a launch 360 that works to this day (knock on wood.)
Click to expand...

me too, stood in line to get it launch day.. never a hicup.. but.. fixed at least 10-20 RROD ones of friends.. and i only have 5 friends (its a joke fixed theirs non stop over and over.. sorry jokes on the net are seldom understood)). To much heat on a board that can warp because the heat sink is so huge and solider points fail. Reballing it will work till it happens again.. and of course you can X-clamp um.. for varying results.. One good note.. oif you ahve an OLD one with lots of use and its working but RROD after a little use.. many are just in need of a good cleaning. In the early days of RROD when you could pick um up on EABY for $75 i bought maybe 10-15% that just where plugged.. (yes plugged , the heatsinks where full, cleaned um up and they worked fine after)The later fats are much better but still .. iffy..

RROD asside, they are jet engines.. way to loud IMHO.
 
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If you're only planning on playing the single player modes of those games, even a 360 fat should last long enough, considering it only takes a few hours to get through each of those games.

I've owned two 360 fats. The first one I bought in spring 2008 and it started overheating last year, causing the GPU to malfunction and games would crash (but no RROD). Still can play DVDs. I bought a cheap replacement that is so far doing fine. Also, the one that overheats is a Falcon (second to last revision) whereas the new one is a Jasper (final revision of the 360 fat, more reliable). So hopefully the Jasper one will last.

If my new one dies, I don't plan on buying another. I don't play it enough anyway. And they're really loud.
 
halo: reach 360, working flawlessly. the fan is quieter than the Shuttle SFF that I used to play with.
 
as long as the fat is manufactured 4th quarter of 2008 or newer it should last a long time. Anything older had falcon and older boards that are prone to RROD.
 
I bought a non-HDD one on launch day (Nov 2005) after camping for 12 hours in Wal-Mart. I've send mine in 5 times to Microsoft(the paid to fix it, was still under warranty) and after that time I bought a cooler that has never failed me yet.

gamexpert-xbox-360-cooler-king.jpg


It's not the crappy "Inner-Cooler" that would overheat your 360 even more, this one is USB powered, it also adds more options to the back of your 360 i.e. 4 USB ports, VGA, etc.
 
I had one of those original white 360s, it was awful. I too sent mine in at least 5 times, the ones they sent back went bad in a few weeks. Finally got one that still ran poorly but at least ran consistently, I too got a cooler for it but it didn't work any miracles. It finally died after a year or so, after my warranty had gone out.

I would never recommend getting one.
 
My launch 360 had a video out problem where you could hear sound but get no video signal. I took off the HDD and sold it for parts. Then I got a later one, an arcade edition with HDMI. I also had a Halo 4 one which to me was only better because it was quieter.
 
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