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RF Shielding, what do you do with yours?


nikeymikey
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So peeps, The metal RF sheilding in your xbox's, do you keep yours, throw it, paint it or something else??

 

I used to throw mine away if they were rusty but just recently I have painted a couple and I am pleasantly surprised with the results. 

Here one where I used a Canary Yellow...

 

 

IMG-3560-min.jpg

IMG-3561-min.jpg

 

Will be adding a yellow ring of light to this one and swapping out the power leds for yellow too. This box currently has red leds in the control ports too. Might change those to yellow too....

 

Edited by nikeymikey
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3 minutes ago, SakisTheDrifter said:

Never remove the shield from the box. Doing so will harm the airflow direction,increasing temperatures in the proccess

Any scientific proof of this dude? Even if it did make a diff it has to be extremely minimal!!!

 

There is no channeling or anything on the shielding, nothing that directs airflow in any way, it has many vents in it but thats all.

Surely the shielding is for the old rf signal interference regs only and nothing to do with airflow.... I've run my x3 box for about 3/4 years now with no shielding and not noticed any temp difference at all. 

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Yup the tinware is purely to do with RF regs and more over that the USA regs are a little tighter, than the EU and Asia.

Be thank full you don't have an external “extra” ground like they used to insist back in the dark ages (1980’s). You were supposed to ground it as well as the ground in the mains  plug.

Been running boxes for years with out the tinware no issues on cooling and nothing noticeable regarding RF TX and RX.

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1 hour ago, big F said:

Yup the tinware is purely to do with RF regs and more over that the USA regs are a little tighter, than the EU and Asia.

Be thank full you don't have an external “extra” ground like they used to insist back in the dark ages (1980’s). You were supposed to ground it as well as the ground in the mains  plug.

Been running boxes for years with out the tinware no issues on cooling and nothing noticeable regarding RF TX and RX.

Agreed, i think the guys just a little paranoid :)

Maybe he wears a tinfoil hat too :P 

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I've not removed the RF shield from an Xbox but I do recall hearing about a problem if removed on v1.6 Xboxes.  Theu use the RF shield to provide a ground connection to  some parts of the motherboard.  Without it, IIRC, the there's no ground connection made to the AV port or some other circuitry in that area.  However, I could be remembering the problem wrong when it is removed from a v1.6 Xbox.

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Come to think of it I remember something like that.  I have a 1.2 and 1.6 running like that though so maybe its just certain connection types or Boards.  That said a strap link would be simple enough to tack on.

Edited by big F
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That maybe the case with the bottom shielding.  I did have a 1.6 with no top shielding and had no issues with it running. It has since been sold to a mate and he still uses it without issue afaik. Next time i get a 1.6 I'm gonna have to keep it, ram mod it and test out this shielding theory too :) 

Normally I get rid of them asap.

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44 minutes ago, big F said:

Come to think of it I remember something like that.  I have a 1.2 and 1.6 running like that though so maybe its just certain connection types or Boards.  That said a strap link would be simple enough to tack on.

It's the bottom shield that makes the ground connection.  The top can be removed without a problem.  However if it's a black console, I see no reason to remove it.  On a translucent case, that's a different case!

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18 minutes ago, KaosEngineer said:

It's the bottom shield that makes the ground connection.  The top can be removed without a problem.  However if it's a black console, I see no reason to remove it.  On a translucent case, that's a different case!

Yeah its mainly crystals that I used to remove it on, but seeing as the paint job came out well, i will now end up with a rainbow of colours of shielding going forward :)

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On 6/13/2022 at 4:58 PM, nikeymikey said:

Agreed, i think the guys just a little paranoid :)

Maybe he wears a tinfoil hat too :P 

It also cools the incoming air down. When the air hits the cold shield it gets cooler,making more work on the warm components inside. It also acts like a heatsing since it makes contact with both the motherboard and the psu from the bottom side,absorbing their heat. I also dont like someone naming myself "paranoid" after i only said my opinion

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2 hours ago, SakisTheDrifter said:

It also cools the incoming air down. When the air hits the cold shield it gets cooler, making more work on the warm components inside. It also acts like a heatsink since it makes contact with both the motherboard and the psu from the bottom side, absorbing their heat. I also don ' t like someone naming myself "paranoid" after I only said my opinion

No offence meant dude! . 

Also if the xbox has been sat in a room for a good length of time then it will be at the ambient room temp when switched on, same temp as the air around it.

As it gets hotter the shield obviously absorbs some of the heat (its metal) therefore becoming slightly warmer than the ambient room temp. So how does this make the ambient air being pulled through it cool down?

Seems backwards to me that one. Maybe its just me tho. 

Still think the shielding has little to no impact as in my own test I see no difference in two Xbox's running the same setup for 2 hrs next to each other. One has shielding, one does not. Temps did not differ by more than one degree for the entire test. 

People including myself have been running this systems for years with no shielding and never had any issues. 

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It could act as a heat sink if it was thicker as it would allow more sinking of the heat, which would create wider difference from ambient to heated which will actively pull heat from the sink. 1mm tin plated steel is not enough. It will pull some heat but nothing really notable.  To make effective it would need to be actively chilled. If you went there you’d be better to just chill the Cooler directly. You then get into the realms of Peltier and phase change cooling. 
I would love to see an Xbox running phase change with a cpu temp struggling to get to 20c under load.

mmm may be I should raid my spares and build one for giggles.

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5 hours ago, nikeymikey said:

No offence meant dude! . 

Also if the xbox has been sat in a room for a good length of time then it will be at the ambient room temp when switched on, same temp as the air around it.

As it gets hotter the shield obviously absorbs some of the heat (its metal) therefore becoming slightly warmer than the ambient room temp. So how does this make the ambient air being pulled through it cool down?

Seems backwards to me that one. Maybe its just me tho. 

Still think the shielding has little to no impact as in my own test I see no difference in two Xbox's running the same setup for 2 hrs next to each other. One has shielding, one does not. Temps did not differ by more than one degree for the entire test. 

People including myself have been running this systems for years with no shielding and never had any issues. 

The bottom of the shield gets warm. The sides are were its cool(From where the air comes in). And of course i didnt mean that the difference will be big, i only wanted to say that it does make a difference,even a tiny one.

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  • 1 month later...
On 6/20/2022 at 6:00 PM, SakisTheDrifter said:

The bottom of the shield gets warm. The sides are were its cool(From where the air comes in). And of course i didnt mean that the difference will be big, i only wanted to say that it does make a difference,even a tiny one.

People have been doing this for YEARS and I've never heard of it causing issues. I don't think it matters much.

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  • 9 months later...

Yes, removing all the shielding including the bottom can induce video problems from interference etc. There are older threads regarding this. Some boards are worse than others for being affected IIRC too.

I have a V1.0 board that will not output any video over component once removed from the shielding base. Once it's back in the case, bingo the video goes back to normal. The other boards I have do not do this that I've tested so far, bit of an oddball board.

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29 minutes ago, trencherfield said:

Yes, removing all the shielding including the bottom can induce video problems from interference etc. There are older threads regarding this. Some boards are worse than others for being affected IIRC too.

I have a V1.0 board that will not output any video over component once removed from the shielding base. Once it's back in the case, bingo the video goes back to normal. The other boards I have do not do this that I've tested so far, bit of an oddball board.

Thank you for confirming my sanity. :) Put the bottom shielding back on and problems stopped... Left the top off though, cuz it's COOL. Except for that damn corrosion on the DVD-ROM drive.

PXL_20230619_060721263.jpg

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5 hours ago, big F said:

Was planning to make a minimalist bottom shield, to get round this for some boxes, just not done it yet.  That said I only run two with completely no shield at all and they work fine.

Is it just bad luck for me that no bottom shield is causing the issue? Should I cut one down so that I can have grounding across the motherboard and try that?

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Well essentially you could do that or probably easier just get some 1mm steel sheet,  copper will also do it, if you cant find steel sheet. Then cut out a new one. You can paint it etc as long as its bear metal where the screws attach it to the case and the boards grounds it should be ok.

That said if you want to experiment with the minimalist ground shielding you can use coper tape and place it on the board over areas where the video chip connections are and any cnnected path ways on the underside of the board.  As long as the tape has a connection to the boards ground it should work. Just avoid taping on through hole solder points as they can perforate the take and creat an unwanted circuit.  
 

I used  to do this with old video units and signal converters as the ground shielding on them is usually rubbish.  Solder a wire tail on to each and either link them together or tap to a near ground.

Edited by big F
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