I am liking Gizmodo more and more everyday. This time they have a story from Nikkei about a thermal design expert looking inside of two Xbox 360’s. One of the 360’s is from Nikkei’s IT Pro editorial office that was purchased at the end of 2005. The other belongs to a reporter in the IT Pro editorial office and was repaired in May 2007. Here is some of the things he found.

The cooler fan’s maximum wind speed was 1.1 m/s, only 1/2 to 1/3 compared with general desktop PCs. It may be partly because the fan rotation was reduced to lower noise. According to an expert’s analysis, “The amount of switched air is slightly in short considering the chassis’ size (309 x 258 x 83 mm3).”

“The heat sink on the graphics LSI is so small, I wonder if it can really cool down the board,” our expert said.

Microsoft apparently had no choice but to downsize the graphics LSI heat sink in order to locate a DVD drive above it. The DVD drive’s bottom surface covers the top of the heat sink and forms an air channel.

In only five minutes since we started playing the game, the temperature of the heat sink on the graphics LSI rose to 70°C (158°F). The thermal gradient was about 10°C/min (50°F).

In 15 minutes, the microprocessor heat sink temperature stabilized at 58°C (136.4°F), but the heat sink on the graphics LSI rose to 80°C (176°F), 57°C (134.6°F) above the room temperature.

You should go to there site and read it but in short the design sucks. But I am still playing with it.