Repair Challenge: XBOX ONE S! (Beep on then beep off)

Question

CLARIFICATION YES, BEFORE STARTING WORK ON THIS OF COURSE I GOOGLED AND WATCHED SEVERAL VIDEOS (MOSTLY USELESS) AND READ RESOURCES ON COMMON XBOX ONE AND ONE S PROBLEMS. I tried the HDD in a PC, and it does show up as several NTFS partitions with files that all look fine. Blu Ray drive at least powers up and can insert and eject a disc. Tried the "cold mode hairdrier" trick to spin the fan manually. It's not the fan. The fan works. All other components of the board seem to work. Just the system started up with a startup sound, and shut down with a shut down sound immediately after. Likely a protection being triggered. Help meee! Trying to figure out this XBOX One S issue: https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/523582/PSU+11... Any ideas? It makes the start and then stop sound. Southbridge gets voltage. All 12V test points get voltage. Power rails to CPU suspiciously low resistance. Details in iFixit link.

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I have an XBOX ONE S that I bought as “for parts” on eBay and the owner says it was kept in a clean house, etc. It is indeed clean inside. No signs of water damage. The PSU is also fine. The APU had a TON of thermal grease all over the surface mount capacitors. I didn’t remove that yet but I did re-apply some arctic silver and I used a more reasonable amount. The symptoms I see: Console when plugged in does a few quick pulses to the APU fan. Is it trying to init? Console when eject is pressed makes the eject sound, then the shutdown sound immediately after. Console when power is pressed makes startup beep and then shutdown beep immediately after. I don’t know what kind of issue I’m getting yet. Is there a JTAG interface or some way to do further diagnosis on this thing? 11.94V sounds perfectly fine for a 12V rail. Should I simpy try plugging a PC power supply into the motherboard to see if it will boot? Any links or info on diagnosis would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! later Aha! In the image you can see the CPU filter capacitor is registering just 1 ohm! The others are pretty low too but I bet if I remove that one it’ll at least boot. I have a server motherboard with a broken socket that I can steal capacitors from. Might replace the whole row if necessary. later still Looks like I was wrong. That capacitor I removed still offers up almost exactly the uf value on the tin. So that was another dead end. Hmm... One weird thing, all of the test points register 60Hz but not 110V. So thankfully the PSU isn't pushing wall socket voltage through. But that frequency is weird. My multimeter needs a charge though so I'll measure that again after it has. The entire power area for the APU offers almost no resistance to the ground plane which is worrying. Again, need to charge that multimeter and re-check. later again Power on with no heatsink, the processor doesn't even warm to the touch. CPU, GPU, and other test points around the board pulse to 1-2V and then turn off fast. Can't help but think it's related to the very low impedance between ground and positive on the V rails for the CPU/GPU. Is that normal? USB port is charging the multimeter So that 5V rail from the southbridge is working. Lots of 12V test points are consistently 12V (11.94V) So... Does any one have a diagram of the test points around the motherboard? What voltages / values should I be seeing? What are some likely culprits? Thanks in advance! You're all wonderful! This is the original XBOX One. Similar, but not exactly what I need. I can still maybe work from it.

Gough Lui · Answer

Sorry - I've been quite busy and am at work ... supposing you didn't lift any traces or warp the board significantly, you might well be fine. However, that's not to say that the VRM didn't fail for other reasons (e.g. overloading due to a faulty CPU or shorted semiconductor is also possible). That being said, I only had the time to jump around your video - for such boards it pays to: - Be Patient - the board is designed with many vias to take heat away from the MOSFETs and use the copper planes as heatsinks. Hence if using hot air from the top, it can take a while to get things melted. - Use Additional Heat - if you have access to a hotplate of sorts, it could pay to rest the board on top of it so that it gets heated from the other side as well. This reduces the possibility of warpage of the board (which can stress the traces and other BGA joints) as well as reduce the thermal energy required to melt the solder. - Use Flux - mainly to conduct the heat slightly better and keep oxidation at bay - just remember to clean it off properly. - Don't Scratch - scrubbing with the tweezers is asking for trouble - applying pressure before it's ready risks lifting pads, scratches components and potentially also scratches adjacent traces on a slip of the tip. Resoldering the new MOSFETs will take some very careful work - the problem is the amount of solder required. On manufacturing lines, solder paste is pushed through stencils to leave a very precise amount which allows for the rear heat-sinking contact and all electrical contacts to make good contact. When applying by hand, it's very hard to achieve consistency - and if just pre-tinning the pads and reflowing, you will need flux and hope that you didn't supply too much/too little solder or too little heat resulting in a solder void on the thermal conduction pad (as the MOSFET could then cook and overheat). - Gough

lilithelotor · Answer

You are so wonderful and I can't thank you enough. I will work patiently from now on and I have learned a lot from this process. It is actually the first time I have ever used my hot air rework station for its intended purpose. Before this I only used it to "reball" a MacBook Pro my friend owned. I got it working, amazingly! My plan is to buy about 5 of each of the 2 kinds of MOSFET and try replacing those, as well as maybe 10 of those capacitors. That way I have plenty of parts. My strategy will be to replace one MOSFET, test continuity to ground. If still low, replace another. Keep going until the issue goes away. I will probably not post again until the end of the month as I promised my partner I would not buy more parts from eBay for the rest of the month. (I think buying parts at all counts so I will be on hiatus.) Thanks again! I appreciate your guidance SO MUCH!

Gough Lui · Answer

Most of the time, VRM issues are blown MOSFETs which have become shorted - your low resistance measurement is suggestive that the MOSFET on that phase may have gone shorted. Short burst of voltage and shut down may be the converter going into protection due to overcurrent detection or because the shorted MOSFET may have tripped an upstream over-current protection. There's no easy way to test the MOSFET in circuit (to my knowledge, at least), but I would suggest replacing it and seeing what happens. It seems unlikely that the CPU/GPU itself is shorted since the other phases seem to measure a more reasonable resistance. - Gough

Gough Lui · Answer

Another thing I forgot to mention - MOSFETs are very sensitive to over-voltage stress, and an extension of this is that they are very susceptible to ESD damage. Do avoid handling the chips with bare hands too much and work in an ESD protected environment as much as possible. If you want to do things in parts, that's okay - but given the relatively low cost of the MOSFET and the potential that a shorted MOSFET could cause out-of-spec output every time you try to boot the unit, my philosophy is to "rework on a roll". Once you establish a pattern, it's much quicker to just do the whole lot (good or bad) in one sitting with the board still heated etc. This avoids thermal cycling which stresses the board, wasted time from downing tools and starting up again, and potentially more oxidation of solder from sitting at high temperatures after the initial good solder joint has been formed. Also remember to clear the pads well - you may well be working with leaded solder whereas the board would have been manufactured lead-free. Mixing the two often results in matte-looking, sometimes brittle joints. Good luck! - Gough

shabaz · Answer

I thought a good strategy might be to remove components that are likely to fail and test for grounding out again without them. That strategy may work, but there are risks along the way. I can't assume your experience level, and I may repeat myself at times to emphasise the importance of some points. I didn't mention how severe such a thing (that shall not be repeated) could be, so I'm afraid I chose to repeat it. Also, you'll find some engineers ask a lot of seemingly obvious questions like "was the hard drive checked" - because they do not know you, and from experience plenty of people say things like "I checked everything" when clearly they have not. I'm not suggesting that is you - I'm suggesting that I have no way of knowing, so sometimes people ask twice, in different ways.

matey · Answer

I had a similar issue with an Xbox one s that I was repairing for my son's friend, the Xbox had no display due to bent pins in the hdmi port, I replaced the port , retested and had flashing display with artifacts, so I replaced the hdmi retimer IC.The first IC did nothing,checked my work and found bridged pins on the port, and some connections not making under the chip.All the voltages and grounds were present at the IC accept the operation enable pin will see 3.3volts and then drop to nothing, so I assumed I killed that chip and put another one on.This time the Xbox will power itself off after two seconds.This time I crapped myself thinking I had busted it, when I cleaned the CPU and replaced the thermal grease, I had trouble with the X clamp ,so I thought I must of used to much force and damaged the CPU. I went about checking resistances to ground and found all the caps under the CPU shorted to ground and other caps with low resistance to ground same as what's happening with the above Xbox, the test point for GFCORE read 0.9 ohms and the CPU CORE read 1.8 ohms which I took as a short, I had nothing to reference this board to I had no shorts on the six pins that the power supply connected to. This thing would also stay on for a couple of minutes without the hard drive connected.i gave up and told the misses it's dead I cant help it sorry give it back, she says are you sure so I tried once again I ordered some retimer ic from Digi key.I thought to myself that I didn't really touch anything apart from the port and the retimer IC and I watched people on YouTube hamfisting these clamps on and off.In the end I put on a third retimer module thinking it was a waste of time, but to my surprise it all worked I and my son played a few hours of FIFA football on it to test, then I handed it back. Sorry about the rambling story i hope this might help someone out there.

lukewalker67 · Answer

I bought a Xbox One S with the same exact problem. Interestingly though when I plug in the power adapter I get a fan twitch 3 or 4 times then it just stops. When I try to turn it on the light comes on but then goes straight off. I checked all the mosfets and they are all reading correctly and as far as I can see there are no shorts on the board. I am thinking that the problem is the APU. I tried turning it on again but this time I put a significant amount of pressure on the APU and then I got fanspin for a few seconds before it shut off again. I think the APU needs to be reflowed but I have no where near the experience or hardware to perform such a task. If you guys have any ideas let me know! Hope all is well and stay safe

Repair Challenge: XBOX ONE S! (Beep on then beep off)

CLARIFICATION

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