XBOX – be quiet!

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 | General

I have 3 Xbox 360's at home. Seems a bit too much, but they have really come down in price, and I use 2 of them as extenders for my Vista Media Center. The biggest problem with the Xbox is the noise it produce. The Media Center box is virtually silent using a mCubed hfx classic, so I want my extenders to be as quiet as possible. I could of course buy some Linksys DMA 2100 extenders, but they do not support VGA out, which is the only input option on my LCD monitor.

I'm using one of the Xboxes in the kitchen, connected to a 15" LCD monitor. The LCD is mounted above the fridge and serves as a kitchen TV. The Xbox is hidden behind a shelf placed above the refrigerator. This is almost in ear height when standing up and makes the noise come out pretty loud.

I read some reviews on the Lian Li PC XB01 case and decided to give it a try. Opening the Xbox will void the warranty, so I decided to modify the oldest one, as it no longer has a warranty.

The Lian Li case is pretty large as you can see in the video below.

This is mainly because of the large 120mm fan in the back. But it also gives some opportunities regarding further modding and better controlling the noise. You can even put a water cooling system in there. There are dedicated holes in the case for the water tubes.

It was quite tricky to dismount the Xbox, and you need a set of Torx tools (6, 8 and 10) to be able to do the work. Mounting the mainboard and DVD drive in the Lian case was straight forward.

The result

As this mod is only used as a Media Center Extender and not used for playing games at all, I didn't need the Xbox harddrive. The only noise coming from the case will be the fan. The standard fan which comes with the case is not very silent, but far better than the Xbox fans. I guess I will order a Papst fan to replace the standard fan.

Standard Xbox 360 Arcade (Falcon chipset)

Xbox 360 inside Lian Li PC XB01using oem fan (Zephyr chipset)

I also found a more extreme cooling solution for even more silent mods. Check out this site, which has an awesome mod: http://www.silentxbox.com/xbox_eng.php

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1 Comment to XBOX – be quiet!

Ayden Simmons
May 9, 2010

I own an Xbox and a Playstation and both are really good game consoles. Let's see what are Microsoft's future updgrades on its Xbox game console.`:,

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Knut Hamang

This is the official site for Knut Hamang. I am a professional technical consultant specialized in Microsoft and .NET technologies and platforms. I work as an independent consultant in Norway and have more than 10 years of professional experience. To get in contact with me, please send me an email or check my public profile on View Knut Hamang's profile on LinkedIn