Ace Modder Explains Why The 360 Is So Loud

Keane Ng

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Ace Modder Explains Why The 360 Is So Loud



Master of the modders Ben Heck has illuminated why exactly the Xbox 360 makes such a racket, and why that makes it so dangerous.

The Xbox 360 is loud. Some are louder than others, inexplicably, but most of them are loud enough to keep your parents awake if they're sleeping one room over. "Turn that dang machine off!" they say when you're up late playing Gears of War 2 with your buddies online. That's fine - some of us could care less if our parents aren't getting their beauty sleep, but really, if someone could explain just why the machine produces so much noise, I think we could all rest better at night.

Here comes master modder GamesRadar [http://benheck.com/]. "I'm not really sure what the RPM is, but I've run the DVD drives 'open' before and it's scary fast."

Scary fast enough to put the fear of God in Heck, apparently. This is a man who has lived with his head and hands in the guts of machines for years and the 360 gives him the willies. "I have no problems sticking my hands around running machinery, band saws, CNC machines, etc, but the 360's DVD drive scares me," he remarked.

The converse of the 360 being loud, naturally, is that the PS3 is quiet. Heck dropped some knowledge about that as well: "The PS3 has a more custom Blu-ray drive and thus is probably more efficient. As you may or may not be aware, the 360's DVD drive has a higher data transfer rate than the Blu-ray... because it spins so fast!"

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The Shade

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That's why, when my Oblivion disc cracked, I kept it ten feet away from my Xbox at all times. Don't want that sucker blowing apart inside my machine.

My first machine was crazy nuts loud. My new(er) one, replacement for the first RRoD, is much quieter, but still loud as Hell's bells.

Oh well. S'nothing the sound of a battle rifle can't drown out.
 

Onyx Oblivion

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And here I was blaming the cooling fans that never seem to do their job. Thanks for helping put this mystery to bed.
 

Doug

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Onyx Oblivion said:
And here I was blaming the cooling fans that never seem to do their job. Thanks for helping put this mystery to bed.
Same here!
 

zoozilla

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This wasn't really a surprise to me, but nice to have the Big Heck himself confirm it.
 

Alone Disciple

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Er, this is news?

Seeing that the only moving parts are the fan and the drive, I didn't think it would take an 'Ace' modder to narrow this down for us.

::files under 'Duh' category::
 

megapenguinx

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That explains why 360 games seem more durable and can get date read off of them so fast. I actually wondered about this since the noise was definitely not the fans.
 

TaborMallory

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I always thought the sound came from the fan.
I'm the only one among people I know who has an Elite, and ours is crazy loud. I've always just assumed it was a more powerful internal fan.
 

uppitycracker

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Alone Disciple said:
Er, this is news?

Seeing that the only moving parts are the fan and the drive, I didn't think it would take an 'Ace' modder to narrow this down for us.

::files under 'Duh' category::
Ya, I remember reading about this countless times. Even reading how when they switched DVD drives to a different manufacturer, the result was a slightly quieter machine... Oh well, I guess it wasn't as common knowledge as I thought.
 

CosmicGrenade

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I wonder if you could make it shoot out shurikens.....
MAWHAHAHAHAHA
Just did a quick look and it says that the dvd rom for the xbox 360 is a 12x one.... how many rpm is that?
 

scotth266

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Jan 10, 2009
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Doug said:
Onyx Oblivion said:
And here I was blaming the cooling fans that never seem to do their job. Thanks for helping put this mystery to bed.
Same here!
Thirded up. I never really noticed the noise: I tend to play with the volume rather high.
 

Pimppeter2

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Its nice to now that my xbox is trying, it makes me feel like Im making him do manual labor for free like a sl... jk
 

Doug

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CosmicGrenade said:
I wonder if you could make it shoot out shurikens.....
MAWHAHAHAHAHA
Just did a quick look and it says that the dvd rom for the xbox 360 is a 12x one.... how many rpm is that?
Well, it does present a novel use for a dead Xbox - convert it to a ninja weapon!
 

Zerbye

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Remember when Microsoft made a big deal about how quiet a 360 would run if you copied an entire game to the hard drive? Not hard to imagine that the DVD drive was responsible for all that noise.
 

megapenguinx

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Onmi said:
megapenguinx said:
That explains why 360 games seem more durable and can get date read off of them so fast. I actually wondered about this since the noise was definitely not the fans.
Do you mean the 360 DVD's are more durable then rgular DVD's to handle the rotation speed?
Yeah. Actually......
*goes to check
Yeah they are slightly more durable (they don't bend as much as regular DVD's).
I wonder if it's the same with Blu-ray disks (goes and starts bending all of his games)