Sometimes, DIY repairs lead you down some questionable paths in the hope of even a temporary fix. That’s how we got the myth of the phone-saving rice treatment. Sure, it feels right, but if your device works afterwards (and keeps on working), it’s luck, not the rice being effective.
The Towel Trick
One of these repair “hacks” was invented when the Xbox 360 was released to widely reported hardware failures, indicated by the “Red Ring of Death.”
Instead of sending the console in, some frustrated gamers turned to the so-called “towel trick”. The process is simple: unplug everything but the power cable, wrap the console in towels and keep it running for 30 minutes. Afterwards, turn it off and let it cool down. And easy as that, your console is back to working order.
Although there are a myriad of reports from people claiming that this process did fix the issue temporarily, it’s fair to say that intentionally forcing your console to overheat has the potential to do more harm.
Finding Your (Re-)Flow
But what about using a more controlled source of heat? That’s the idea behind putting your Xbox 360 motherboard in an oven.
It kind of makes sense. Instead of being soldered by hand, printed circuit boards (PCBs), like motherboards, are manufactured using a process called reflow soldering.
In this process, paste consisting of solder and flux is placed on the contact points of the board, the to-be-soldered components are placed on top of the paste and with some heat, the paste melts and it all comes together.
That’s the very simplified description. The important point is: Large-scale soldering like this usually involves reflow ovens. In theory, the oven method purports that the process can be improvised in a conventional oven: loose solder points “fix themselves” as the solder melts, cools and reseats, leading to a stable contact once again.
It’s an intriguing concept. So much so, even one of iFixit’s own tried it. When Sterling’s MacBook Pro died mid-work, he decided against sending the laptop into a professional reflow outfit and put it in the oven for a couple of minutes. It worked—and it’s not the only claim of electronics baking success. Across the internet, you find stories of people fixing all kinds of electronics using their oven, be it TV motherboards or dead graphic cards. Even Linus of Linus Tech Tips fame tried it—twice.
To Bake Or Not Bake, That Is The Question
Does this mean you should actually chuck your electronics in your oven and hope for the best? Probably not. While the “hack” might get some additional use out of hardware believed to be dead for good, it’s important to point out that even when it works, it’s highly temporary and has the potential for more damage down the road.
In his description of the procedure, Sterling points out that even though the MacBook worked for another few months, it continued to fail again and again. The oven trick gave it a bit more time, but it’s not a true fix in the way that it tackles the root cause of the issue.
You have to consider that every time the PCB is getting the heat treatment, it and the components on it get stress-tested which can lead to board bending or cause component failure. There’s also no new solder paste applied, so you’ll potentially work with material that is already past its prime.
Furthermore, while a reflow oven and your own personal one might be similar in the sense that they produce heat, the likelihood that your conventional oven is as precise as a reflow oven when it comes to heat distribution and consistency is pretty slim.
They’re made for different applications. Your personal one is for food, which is coincidentally the main reason why you shouldn’t bake your electronics. While lead has largely been phased out as a solder component over the last 20 years, breathing in solder fumes should be avoided. Potentially getting solder residues on your food is even more risky. So if you really must bake your electronics, do it in an oven that won’t ever be used for food again.
It might also turn out that the theory of what the “hack” is supposed to do isn’t even what’s happening. As reddit user makoaman points out, it might be that the process removes moisture from the epoxy under the chip die leading to a better connection as it shrinks up as most of the time people describe the method, the recommended temperature isn’t even high enough to melt (lead-free) solder.
What’s The Real Fix?
Unfortunately, the option with the highest chance for a lasting fix in most of these cases is a reball or rework of the ball grid array of the non-functioning chip. This involves desoldering and removing the chip, like the CPU or GPU, reapplying the ball grid array (BGA) and refitting the chip on the fresh BGA.
If you don’t have a BGA rework station—and let’s be honest, who has?—and microsoldering experience, you might be able to achieve a similar result using a heat gun, flux and patience.
For the Xbox 360, though, this will still not be enough to fix it. During the root cause analysis, Microsoft determined that it wasn’t the BGA connection between the component and the motherboard that was failing, but the one inside the GPU itself. So unless you’re really dedicated and willing to swap out the GPU entirely with one from the later “Jasper” model, a temporary fix might be all that’s in the cards.
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