About: BEng Software and Electronic Engineering with Honours. Software company director and freelance developer/engineer. Available for freelance development and consulting. Experience with embedded systems, full sta…

Hello all and welcome to my second Instructable.

Before we continue, I must say that I feel as though I have missed some parts out. I will keep adding bits here and there when I notice they're missing but otherwise, if you have a decent know how then you should be fine with tis Instructable.

The reason I did this project was, firstly, because I had an XBox 360 which I didn't use much. Secondly, because the fans were way too loud so I needed an alternative cooling system. And thirdly, why not? It's true, the XBox 360 is outdated by 10 years now, and is in no way better than an average gaming PC. But it's something I did for my own learning experience, and again, why not?!

Since I was in school I have wanted to water cool my PC, but I just never had the resources for it. At one point I did a homemade water block: YouTube Video - Homemade waterblock

It didn't look great but the overall concept was pretty simple and I made it for cheap. Best thing was it never leaked, although I didn't use it in my pc for a long time. I upgraded not long after and bought a maintenance free water-loop and now have a top spec PC with a maintenance free water cooler.

Anyway moving on, I managed to buy an XSPC XBox 360 waterblock for cheap (less than £15)! Otherwise, they are £60, or they were the last time I checked. This was one of the reasons I chose to watercool the XBox 360, with the main reason being that the fans were way too loud. Also, it's the only thing I didn't mind getting messed up since I didn't really use it much (but I do now)! I had added the Talismoon Whisper fan, and another side fan but together, they were still too loud.

Firstly, I wanted to have an open frame design which was inspired by this: MAXXPlanck V2 - Wall Mounted PC

I cannot take credit for the originality of the wall-mounting style as it has been done before!

Final Product Video: LINK

Overall Concept

The idea is to lay out all the parts in an open style and have the acrylic underneath to apply an edge-lit effect. Firstly you want to strip the XBox 360, so you can modify the parts later on such as the RF moduIe and the DVD drive cables. I started by gathering all the required parts, designing and checking fitting on Publisher (my favourite tool), and checking placement of parts. Once I was happy with that I marked them out on the wood then cut out the slots for the LED strips. Wrapped it all in carbon fibre, fixed the LED strips in. Then I cut the acrylic mounts, bevelled the edges, mounted them on, fixed the components on top. Then the control panel was created and all cables attached. Testing took place in between most steps to ensure no problems would arise later on. Final step was to connect the pipes and fill up the reservoir which was a bit more difficult than I thought it would have been!

Attached is a Publisher file which contains my original design idea, and the board layout - where I need to cut holes etc. The control panel design is also there for your reference - feel free to modify as you wish! My final control panel was nothing like the original design idea.

(CHECK BILL OF MATERIALS EXCEL FILE FOR EBAY LINKS!)

Components you will need:

XBox 360 motherboard

XBox 360 RF module

XBox 360 DVD drive + SATA + power cable

XBox 360 PSU

60cm x 60cm 18mm MDF wood (or similar)

60cm length of 2"x2" for the frame support

2-3m of RGB LED strip

RGB LED Strip controller

12v 2A PSU for pump, fans, LEDs etc

3 x 120mm fans (any you like)

360mm radiator (mine was aluminium; get copper if you can!)

XSPC XBox 360 low profile waterblock

EK DCP-4.0 12v PWM pump

2m of tubing

Molex male and female connectors

DC barrel jack and plug

IEC kettle plug/socket pair

22-24AWG wire

Tools you will need