Fabled Opus motherboard appears in Xbox 360
By Darren Murph 
posted Jul 29th 2008 3:59PM
posted Jul 29th 2008 3:59PM
[Via Xbox-Scene, thanks Leonardo]
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So if my pre-falcon 360 ever takes a dump they'll throw one of these bitches up in it?
Yes, and they should send you a new, compatible brick that has lower power consumption than your previous.
@Striker
Er, no they won't. The existing PSU has a higher maximum output but it will run at the lower 175w for the newer boards.
@Charles
The Opus units not only have a lower power consumption than the Xenon units, but they also use the same power connector as the Falcon units, and are NOT compatible with Xenon PSUs. The connector from the brick to the Xbox is physically different on the Xbox end, due to specification changes in the newer models.
actually my launch unit RROD'd a week after repair and they sent me the new smaller power brick....no problems since.
i have a new xbox 360 with hdmi and used my old power brick with it and they plug together just fine, no idea if the new brick is smaller, i never opened it
@Striker
They changed the power connector to prevent the 175w PSU from fitting into the 203w Xenon (as it obviously could not supply the required wattage) but not the other way round.
Have you actually tried plugging in a 203w PSU into a 175w board? If you do, you will see that it fits and works fine. Or do a websearch for reports.
wow... it's sim city, the motherboard
...drop a Red Ring of Death right... /there/ ..and see what happens...
*pushes tornado button*
If I ended up with one of these I'd be asking for a discount for my refurbished console or my money back. But I suppose those component ports have to do something.
Jasper's around soon, isn't it? Both of these on shelves... I suppose most consumers won't be able to tell the difference. Look for HDMI on the box I guess then.
If you send in a console with HDMI, then you'll get a Falcon refurb back. This is for people who send in NON-HDMI consoles.
I don't have a console to send in. I'm planning to buy one and it sounds like they're putting them on shelves.
Opus consoles do not appear in retail. All the consoles in retail stores have HDMI, and thus are Falcon consoles.
Brilliant.
MS has been sending Opus refurbished consoles out for about a month now. It's very easy to see if you get an Opus console, you just have to look at the label on the box. It will say "Falcon" followed by the console type.
You can read the full guide here, including pics of the label:
http://forums.xbox.com/15804553/ShowPost.aspx
No HDMI no deal.
Likewise, no 3G, no Wi-Fi, no deal :)
is their any way to do a visual inspection to see if you got this board... without removing it from the xbox?
Well if u have a new 360 (the one with the 60GB hard drive) then u prolly have this one. So opening it to find out would be a waste of ur warrenty
So in order to have a non RROD xbox 360 u need to give up ur HDMI output :X
http://forums.xbox.com/15804553/ShowPost.aspx
@ Rick James
No, the 60GB does NOT use this mobo. Only non-HDMI consoles that have RRoD'ed will get this mobo, meaning if your non-HDMI console RRoDs then you will get the Opus board. All 360's leaving the shelves have HDMI (not quite sure about the 360 Arcade, but that's a waste of money anyways) and will NOT be Opus boards.
Actually I have a Falcon board with HDMI, regrettably not the 60gb version. However my inquiry was for a friend who just had his first gen sent in for repairs. It looks like he still has a Xenon board though (label on return box said Xenon Pro as opposed to Falcon or Opus). I was hoping he got the new board seeing as this is the 3rd time his has gone back.
@nsdcx
Yea now that i looked into it ur right. My bad
@ Rick James
And just to reiterate, I was asking If you could do a visual inspection, like 1 inducer coil for opus as opposed to 3 for xenon. Which would not void your warranty.
You look at the CPU heatsink. This one has no heat pipe, whereas the original has a copper heat pipe.
Remember when consoles were just consoles and we didn't have to worry about what motherboards were installed, how many watts they drew, or what firmware they ran? They used to be indestructible toys that were just fun all around. What happened?
'progress'.
As for me, I only play console games when they run in emulators, and I'll keep that policy.... yeah, forever.
I remember having to blow on the bottom of the NES cartridges to maybe get the damn game to run.
hey, thats how my girlfriend gets me to work too!
Nice to see M$ is keeping up with hardware updates. Im still happy with my ps3 though
Be glad you got a ps3, if we don't miss 8.10 like we did 8.04, it'll be a decent desktop dual boot in six months.
The 360 will only be what microsoft lets it be.
I don't call 256 MB RAM "Decent" for desktop use, sorry.
Wow, that is one impressive heatsink. Did they get rid of the noisy fans by using that monster?
forserious!! that thing is huge!
That is still one shoddy looking board. I guess you can't fault Microsoft for skimping on the cost of replacement boards after they already wrote off billions. Well wait, you can. A $5 alarm clock made in China looks like it has a better quality mainboard than the 360.
Does that board even have a fan? Still won't do anything about bad optical drives.
Obviously, you've done very thorough testing to determine that this board model performs as "badly" as it looks, not just seen a photo of it.
hey microsoft, put them in the rubbish already, stop that now!
Please recycle. The whole concept of garbage is ridiculous.
Oh hey, let's mix all this unrelated stuff together, stick it in the ground, and forget about it! Brilliant!
Fucking shut up, Ethana.
@ Zorque:
You, sir/madam/whatever, are a douche-bag. Ethena2 is right, and you have no reason to be an asshole.
Unnecessary/unrelated anger is always welcome on some iPhone posts, go find one and vent.
NoAndThen: Go read his post history, I dare you. Besides, even though the original comment about the 360 being garbage is stupid, taking it literally is even stupider.
Design and production runs are VERY expensive. Microsoft much have several massive warehouses of Xenon cases/drives..
I mean they wouldn't bother for a hundred thousand, they would just scrap them, as the mobo is the main costly component.
So this means:
1/ The are reusing everything else from teh original Xenon, cases, DVD drives, the lot.
2/ They have so many it was worthwhile to do.
3/ with so many, I can't believe that many original Xenons havn't already failed. I suspect these will be sent out for ANY failed unit, including HDMI ones...
I'm patiently waiting for the Valhalla revision before I get an Xbox 360.
Replace the damn xclips with some screws and the board wont warp, and the system wont RRoD.
Seriously, how the hell is it that the internet can come up with such a simple fix, yet Microsoft still chooses to ignore that, and completely re-engineer the entire board!
so... if i were to have an xbox 360 with a dvd drive on the fritz,
and i were to magically induce red-ringage in said xbox 360
...i could recieve, in the mail, an xbox 360 with an opus board?
what would potentially become of my launch power brick, were i to carry out this (purely hypothetical) course of actions?
I myself work as a technician for a company that fixes xbox 360's and i havent seen this opus replacement for xenon board. What i can gather is that we replace xenon with refurb xenon board with an additional gpu heatsink pipee seen on elite or falcon.
Working xenon consoles fails during the testing process because of the old gpu heatsink. So we have to replace the xenon with the attach gpu pipes to pass the testing process.
With no HDMI whats the user, being cooler (temp wise)? Neat though.
I had sent my xbox 360 in, it was manufactured in September of 2007, and I bought it in October. It seemed to have been the original Xenon design, but I'm not sure... No HDMI. Anyway, the one they sent back , said 'Xenon Pro' on the box. Someone else mentioned they got back a 'Xenon Pro' as well... what is this? Is it just the original design with a new heatsink or what? I was hoping to get back one of these 'opus/falcon' boards, but doesn't look like it. If it helps, I'm in Canada.