A Solder’s Balls: 360 Red Ring of Death’s Possible Explanation

by Andrew Podolsky on January 22, 2008 at 11:22 pm

The mysterious Red Ring of Death has perplexed many Xbox 360 owners. What evil magic causes the system to overheat and crap out so often? Bunnie’s Blog has a very interesting theory about why the technology behind Microsoft’s console leads so often to failure.

The key seems to be in the solder joints, where a simple dye test can indicate faulty manufacturing. According to Bunnie’s Blog, it all starts with a RROD 360:

I actually sent it off to MEFAS to get digested for solder joint inspection on the GPU through a process called “dye and pry”. In this process, the motherboard is flooded with red ink, and then the GPU is mechanically pried off the board. The red ink flows into any of the tiny cracks in the solder balls, and at least in theory, when you pry the GPU off the cracked regions will shear first so you will be left with visible red spots at the points of failure.

Photos of this test show lots of partial cracking in the solder balls, but it doesn’t seem to show “catastrophic failure”, which would be indicated by “pools of red ink over a connection interface”. It’s hard to say if this is the true cause of RROD, but it’d be nice to see if Microsoft will have a response to this type of product testing.

Comparing the difficulty of getting complex systems to work just right, this blogger also brings to mind the imagery of space and air travel. These products are so complex that you just have to marvel that they manage to get nearly everything right. Good thing Microsoft’s not in charge of designing the space shuttle, right?

Via Bunnie Studios

Share This: