3 Red Light Fix Review
The XBox 360 is a great gaming console. There are plenty of excellent games available, it’s fast, reasonably stylish and well designed… except for one thing.
The 360 has a serious design flaw with the heatsinks on the main circuit board that can cause the console to overheat, especially if it is used when in confined spaces, or if other objects have been stacked on top. This in turn loosens up the solder holding the components on the circuit board, resulting in what is known as a dry joint.
The dry joint prevents a connection between the electronic components, and causes a fault. The XBox 360 detects the fault and displays the dreaded three red lights on the front panel.
All in all, not a nice thing to happen to your expensive 360, and unfortunately not an uncommon problem.
Unfortunately, it can get even more expensive to repair, both in time and money. Microsoft will insist you ship the console back to them for repair, and that can be expensive if the warranty has run out. The repair process can also take a considerable amount of time to complete, leaving you without your XBox 360 for a long time.
Frustrated by this situation, a number of XBox 360 owners have come up with their own simple and effective repairs for the console.
One of these solutions is presented in the 3 Red Light Fix Guide. It presents a method on how to repair the XBox 360 in fourteen steps.
The 3 Red Light Fix costs $24.95. This gives you membership to the 3 Red Light Fix website, access to two PDF eBooks with detailed steps, and access to three videos.
- 3 Red Light Fix Repair Guide PDF.
- XClamp Repair Guide PDF.
- The Disassembly Video.
- The XClamp Repair Video.
- Another XClamp Repair Video.
It is highly recommended that before starting the repairs on your XBox 360 that you read through all the 3 Red Light Fix eBooks and watch all the videos several times. It’s worth noting here that you will void your warranty if you attempt to do the repairs yourself. The guide itself makes these recommendations.
The main 3 Red Light Fix Repair Guide lays out the repair process as fourteen steps. These go through the disassembly, repair, and reassembly process. You would use this guide as the checklist for the repair process.
The XClamp Repair Guide actually offers more detail than the main guide. It’s more of a manual than a checklist, and it offers diagrams, additional tips, and more explanatory text.
The Disassembly Video shows exactly that, the process of disassembly. There’s no spoken instruction on this video, it’s purely a demonstration of how to get into your XBox 360.
The first XClamp Repair video demonstrates the process of removing the heatsinks from the motherboard, cleaning, and then reattaching them. The second XClamp video shows a similar demonstration of how the removal and reattachment of the heatsink can be done in around four minutes. Once again these are both unspoken.
Both XClamp videos have a scrolling text along the bottom which describes what is happening. This is a small flaw in a good product. Personally, I’d have preferred a narration for all the videos. It’s easier to keep track visually of what is going on if you don’t have to read as well.
Overall, I found the 3 Red Light Fix Guide to be a very well written, and most importantly, understandable set of documents. Easily worth the $24.95.
