Project: Blackbox 360 *Completed*

I am not a pro on writing this stuff up and I do not have camera skills but i do have the modding bug

Basically i have "pretty in pink" on hold right now waiting on LED's from china as well as a hard drive when i can afford it so I decided I have been wanting to Mod my kids xbox 360. I have had ideas in mind for a long time and searched through alot of parts and other peoples mods when i realized something. Most of the "$60" cases you can buy for the 360 are either ugly as sin or Simply easy to pull of for cheaper. I do not have any super special mods for this planned yet. Just the basic paint job, window install and some nice blue lighting.

Here's some stock pics:



So first things first lets take it apart and cut the window.





Also i decided a window was no good just to look at the cover for the disk drive....


so i cut it and painted it too.



of course the case and the Frame got some flat black love too







and finally a photo of current status:



As of now i am waiting on the ring of light leds "from USA" and i have to cut the window and get it placed. I may end up putting an extra 80mm fan inside some where or an old fan i pulled from a broken ps2. I also have to find a torque screwdriver for the HDD so i can put a window on it and paint it too. I may end up just taping it and painting it though...

As usual i want to hear some feed back and suggestions please thanks for looking.

***8.24.12 UPDATES***


While I am waiting on a few surprises to get here from extreme-mods, I figured i would give a small update ..


I got 2 stock AMD fans that are the perfect size for replacing The 360 fan. I think I will just wire them in to the stock connector so they can run various speeds. I am not sure if these are any better then stock but I feel more comfortable drilling these out for LED's


Took off the heatsink to clean up that stock tim and as i feared it was old, crusty, hard to remove JUNK.


Cleaned up the HS the best I could




Also I decided this thing needs a bit more flash so I found a nice stencil for the side

The dot pattern is for a small inlet for one of the new fans going on.

With the exception of ripping blue LED's out of old fans and stuff to wire some lighting, Thats all I have managed so far...

Input is welcome Thanks for looking

**8/24**

Got the window etched out. Now to get the LED's situated and get it lit up for a preview...

Looks better in person. Using a phone cam.




The chosen fans....


Trimmed and in place....



Lit up preview... Will be better when i get more lighting behind it



Thats all for now
Edited by ViSioNx - 9/3/12 at 6:33pm

Does anyone have any "tips" to help a noob solder those really small surface LED's?

Thanks. I found a tutorial on some website but couldnt get the vid to load. Guess i will search youtube. I ordered 15 and i really don't feel like takling apart the controllers right yet so i may just do the box and 1 controller so i will have 5 left over.

Well the LED's arrived. I guess all and all it was a success. I did manage to lose 1 and melted 2 or 3 but i had 15 tries to do 9 Led's so....

The Tiny Led's were a pain....

My 4 dollar soldering iron

Board before...


They all work i just could not get a pic with that top left one on to save my life hahahah.
I think it looks nice...


I did manage to finish up the HDD mod too. Cut a small window and put 2 led's in that aswell.


After checking it out I think my leds are in series and don't have enough power to light them up fully. I may take it back apart and either take 1 out or replace them with smaller parallel ones.

If you paid attention you are probably saying there are only 5 lights in the front panel and not 9.... Well i started to do my black controller too.

When i started doing it I ripped the pad off of the first led. I was able to salvage it due to the position of the trace and i just soldered to it. The second one (top right) I was being extra careful to not rip the pad but i still did! The trace on that one is no where near the position i need it to be so i left it alone for now. I think i will try to get a trace pen or whatever and "draw" the pad back. I dont know if that will work or if there is a better way so i hope maybe you guys could point me in the right direction.

Left to do:
Cut and mount window.
Clean up drive cover cut.
Wire extra fan for heatsink
Wire led's for the case.
Re assemble

Also i may take the heatsink off and at least re apply thermal paste. Never had any heat issues but since i have it this far down I may as well.

Thanks for looking!!

bump for some input.....

I used old 5mm led's for the hdd mod. The smd ones would be a pita to try to use lol. I used that one and just took my dremel to the tip to make it a finer point. Its also a 40 watt i believe. As far as puting a pc inside the case my kids still play the 360 from time to time. I did think about putting the box in an old matx case i had laying around but meh. Thanks for looking. My kids like the new look so far. They say it looks like daddy's puter now

I have made a bit more progress on this just have not gotten pics.

Window and leds are in place as well as a tiny fan from an old vid card but got to wire it all up and re assemble now.