Shutting up your Xbox 360
It's no secret that the Xbox 360 is one loud machine. On a decibel scale, ours ranks right below a plane tanking off, and just above a jackhammer. The culprit is the DVD drive inside the machine. If you fire up the Dashboard without a disc inside and visit the Marketplace, download things, play Xbox Live Arcade games, and stare at your theme packs, then you'll notice how quiet the thing is. The Night before Christmas made more noise. The fans ain't that loud, folks. However, slip a disc inside, and it's like a team of hamsters decided to go on a stampede.
ExtremeTech has posted a DIY guide to keeping it quiet. It doesn't require hauling out the soldering iron, but you have to get into the guts of your console, and yes -- violate your warranty. Although we'd gladly trade our nearly one-year old warranty at this point for a quieter gaming experience.
That grinding ka-chunka chunk of the optical drive makes us nuts at times, especially when the other Joystiqers are sleeping (which hardly ever happens anyhow), and we have to crank the sound down. For those of you brave enough to give this a whirl, we salute you. Let us know how it goes. Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush.
