So listening to the latest bomcast about Patricks second xbox still, I figured I'd ask a question I've had for a while. I'm on an original launch day 360 It died about 1.5 years after launch so got sent off to be repaired and has been fine since (kinda.. the disc tray is dodgy and the front two usb ports short it out sometimes and reset it). When i got it back however it was significantly heavier, like half as much again, I compared to my friends just to be sure. Any idea what they did with it? I don't want to open it up as will need for next generation!

A few possible explanations.

The most likely answer is, in order to speed up the process of getting an xbox back to you, they gave you someone else's broken xbox that had been fixed. This way you don't have to wait for the possible weeks and of troubleshooting and repair and you mostly wait just for shipping. This happened to me so I assume its normal. I put a mark (a black marker spot) on my broken xbox when it red ringed and I got an xbox back with no mark.

Launch models had less cooling on the GPU I believe. So you're xbox may now be heavier since you got a newer model with beefier heatsinks.

The less likely answer is while fixing it they put the improved cooler in your old xbox.

I thought that but it had marks on it and the usb was broken from before I sent it and was when I got it back, so they opened mine, put what I assume is a massive heatsink and sent it back, I was just curious as haven't heard of a similar case. I'm in NZ by the way so it was serviced somewhere in Australia

I sent my launch 360 back in around 2008 (for red ring). After some research I found they sent me a new 'Falcon' model box and I couldn't detect much difference.

However, I did some research and found out you can essentially ghetto-fix a red ring xbox (after my falcon broke) by opening it up, removing the heatsink, putting some new arctic cooling cement down and reattaching. Heard it works about 50% of the time so it stands to reason in places like AUS and NZ where shipping things is expensive that they might just replace the heatsink with some new thermal compound attached.

<<pure speculation, but hell, you asked the internet. what did you think was coming.

Yea probably, my friend just did the put xbox in oven and hope it melts back to normal trick last week and it worked...

They added a second heatsink when you sent it in for repairs. If you shine a flashlight through the bottom vent you can see the new one. I don't want to jinx it, but that is what finally got me a stable 360 that still works to this day.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2007/06/microsoft-remains-mum-about-updated-360-hardware/

Seems like that would be it but the extra weight feels like it would be more. However good to know, nice to see pics and if it does (touch wood) ever die then i'll open it up and find out!