Xbox 360 Power Supply Mod

Background

I had to purchase two Xbox360 for use in an installation. I purchased one for experimenting, which included playing arcade games. It felt amazing playing games for work, long story short, I ended up keeping it for myself and got two more that are used in the installation couple of thousand miles away from home. The one I kept is a model E with 500GB HDD.

The Problem

The XBOX power supply came with a 15A plug. The left most on the image below

[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“736”] Plugs[/caption]

The power source near my TV set accepts the one in the middle. The input output power rating in the brick were as follows:

INPUT: 240VAC 1.78A

OUTPUT: 12VDC 9.6A, 5VDC 1.0A

I figured I can just use a converter that plugs in the power socket and accepts the bigger plug. All was good for a couple of days and then the brick made crackling noise and let its magic smoke out. This is how it looked

[caption id=“attachment_1430” align=“alignnone” width=“300”]IMG_20150716_102250178 Fried xbox power supply brick[/caption]

I found that the bridge rectifier blew up, I soldered in a replacement but it blew the fuse in my office when it was powered up. I’m not an expert in SMPS, I could not figure out what was wrong with it, hence it went in to the bin.

The solution: ATX Power supply

There were two options:

1. Buy a new one, prone to go up in smoke any time then call up the wire man and have 15A connection drawn from MCB to TV set which would not look good, wife would not give a go on this.

2. Use an ATX power supply.

I check the price of new power supply with the same big plug which was INR2825, which I was not sure it was genuine. Meanwhile, I decided to clean out my desktop PC which included cleaning out the ATX power supply, motherboard, CPU, fans and cables. When I was putting back the CPU, I used force more than it needed which bent the motherboard (huge face palm moment). No it did not come to life again. On the bright side the ATX power supply was just sitting there, I figured I buy a new ATX with the new motherboard which costs about INR 500. The specs on the old ATX luckily matched the output voltages and current. It could supply 16A at 12VDC and 16A at 5VDC, more than the xbox required.

[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“425”] Xbox 360 power supply[/caption]

The brick had a small led that would be orange on stand by and green when powered up. I cut off the pin wire from the base, I could not find any pin out for it on the interwebs, On the brick there were 6 wires which were connected to the pin, two yellow, two black, one red and one blue wire. the yellow wires were 12v, red is 5v black is ground, blue is not used. After the connectivity test, I connect all the wires and powered it on and its going strong since. Unfortunately I lost the pin out diagram I made.

[caption id=“attachment_1432” align=“alignnone” width=“300”]IMG_20151023_161713355 Xbox 360 ATX power supply[/caption]

I might also some fans to keep it more cool.