The unthinkable has happened - my 360 has died on me.

It’s not a run-of-the-mill RROD, either. It all started towards the end of a good gaming session when the graphics suddenly began to distort, as if the colour depth had changed to 16-bit. Eventually the signal output had completely vanished, leaving me with a console that could produce sound but no video. It was well out of warranty (and, if I remember correctly, the extended warranty only applies to RROD symptoms).

I was playing 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand at the time, so perhaps there was some kind of karmic force at work.

After a bit of investigation, I deduced that an X-Clamp mod was needed. After spending a bit of money on some opening tools and the necessary screws and washers, I cracked it open and got to modding.

All things considered, it went quite smoothly at first. The guide I followed to dismantle my 360 was extremely detailed and well written, and removing the x-clamps was not as difficult as I expected. Soon I had a neatly arranged pile of parts. With any luck, I could be done by this weekend.

Then I got to the heatsink.

It was a GPU heatsink that already had some standoffs screwed in. It had a hex head so you could use a wrench to remove it, but as I worked at it with the wrench I found that I was gradually stripping the edges. It was stuck fast.

Not to be taken aback, I decided to get a dremel and cut a line across the top so I could use a flat-head screwdriver to remove it. The screw was still stuck hard - so hard that when I tried using the screwdriver, the metal on the screw began to warp.

Dejected, I resorted to one last try - drilling a hole straight through the middle of the screw and using a screw extractor to gradually ease it out. After successfully getting the screw extractor to catch, I began to wind it out…and the tungsten screw extractor snapped clean off with a surprisingly clear *ping*.

So now I have a 360 GPU heatsink with a screw stuck in one of the holes. A replacement one is on its way to me.

Now that I think about it, I could have saved myself the money spent on drill bits and screw extractors and bought the replacement heatsink in the first place…but it’s the principle, damn it.