Anyone who visits our forum will know Ive been working on this since last December. After many delays and distractions Ive finally managed to get it finished.

Ill start by saying most of the time the noise from the 360 isnt too bad. Its comparable to a home PC or the first versions of the original Xbox and a little louder than the first PS2's. For most people the noise level is fine but I'm easily irritated. When the 360 heats up and the fans speed up it becomes annoying.

The aims of the project were to:

a) Reduce the noise level
b) See if I could do it

I was not looking to lower the temperature to improve the stability. Ive heard reports in forums of the 360 overheating but I have not noticed this myself.

Page 1 - Opening the 360
Page 2 - The Water Block
Page 3 - Installation
Page 4 - The finished product

Opening the 360

I wont go into spend much time on this section a few guides have been published showing how to take the 360 apart and they explain it better than I could.

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2610

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=430626&rl=1

http://www.xboxchopshop.com/catalog/man_360_open.php

Heres the 360 before the warranty was voided.

Removing the face plate reveals the plastic clips across the front of the unit.

Before the two parts of the case can be separated the top and bottom panels need to be removed. No screws are used here, I used a pointy stick to push the tabs out.

Once the grey panels have been removed the two halves of the casing can be separated. Again no screws are used just plastic tabs, the front tabs are easy to open but the back ones can be tricky. A small screwdriver can be used to push the tabs at the back of the case.

Flip the box over and remove the bottom half of the case. At this point you will need a set of Torx screwdrivers. The outer screws hold the top half of the case on while the ones towards the middle hold the board in place. I removed all of the screws before removing the rest of the case.

After opening the 360 the board is easy to remove. The photo to the left shows the CPU and GPU cooler, the large heat pipe cooler is for the CPU and the low profile aluminum heat sink is for the GPU. The second photo shows the mounting clips on the backside of the board. The clips can be levered off using a a flat blade screwdriver.

The 360 uses 2x Delta fans which will be removed.

The pins on the base of each heatsink were removed and used later.

In each photo the GPU is on the left and CPU on the right.