I will tell you that your not alone, as it has happened to me a good Three times in 2 very short years. The first console lasted only 2 months from the date i bought it.
But it was somewhat of a relief because the very nice people at the Game store Replaced the console without the need to send it back. Due to the fact that it was covered by the warranty.
However, out of warranty its a right headache.
There is a cost of over $100 to send your console back to Microsoft, plus a cost of two weeks valuable, Game downtime.
From what I have heard, that when the repair was carried out, the Xbox 360 showed its 3 flashing red light's again after only a couple of weeks.
So how does this Annoying Ring of Death Happen?
The core cause of the console's Hardware failure lies in the Heat sink design, Primarily in the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).
The Optical disk drive is above the GPU, and because of this, the heat made by the GPU is far greater than the heat sink can take in order to maintain an optimal temperature throughout the console.
In the Xbox 360 Elite, Microsoft altered the design of the cooling system so that the Liquid cooling Extend's beyond the CPU to the GPU. This makes the console dissipate the Heat better and therefore does not overheat to the same extent.
So the effect of the heat generated is the warping of the motherboard, which cracks the lead free solder joints, causing the red ring of death.
I searched far and wide for a 'free' solution (towel trick) but ended up creating irreparable damage to my 360 and I had to live with a permanent 3 red lights, or as i like to call it, the Devil's Halo!
I was looking for Valuable information. But if you want that, there has to be a Value on it. (i.e. you gotta pay for it), but if it saves your beloved Xbox, its going to save you a lot of money.
I stumbled upon countless guides out there. Some claiming to fix the Xbox 360 in 30 minutes and some up to 2 hours.
Some guides were very good and offered good explanations, but some were shortened versions of the real good guides.
When I got to do the fix for the first time, it took about two hours. And thats with a degree in electronics! So is a half an hour fix feasible for someone thats not technically minded? So I created a page that gives a proper honest opinion on what guide to use. Narrowed down to a choice of Three.
For my top 3, click the link below.
About the Author:

