Worklog [2026 Contest Entry] Frankenbox 360 - The "Trifecta"

[MegamindSquared]

I've been using these forums for a while now, and finally decided to make an account and try my hand at this year's summer contest. I know a lot of people on these forums like to create portables, but I decided to go a different route. I am going to attempt (I hope successfully) to create "The Trifecta."

What is the Trifecta you ask?

Well, the Trifecta is a mashup of a Wii, PS2 (Slim), & an Xbox 360 in an Xbox 360 shell.

^ Something like this, don't mind the scale.

Also, before anyone says anything, I am using a Later-Gen Falcon (post April 2008) so the Xbox 360 will stay alive (hopefully).

The essentials are as follows:

1. Externally there can only be one power plug (the Xbox 360 PSU plug).
2. All consoles must also output video via one plug (the Xbox 360 AV out).
3. All consoles must boot independently of one another.
4. All consoles must be able to play games and be able to connect controllers.
5. None of the consoles can overheat or have thermal issues (that's gonna be tough).

Here are my stretch goals:

1. Have all of them be able to output via HDMI (custom boards or internal adapters).
2. Have some sort of integrated controller for console/mode selection (rather then the external switches I'm currently planning on).
3. Spend under 20 dollars on additional components or parts for the build (excluding the use of my 3D printer, the consoles, and basic soldering supplies or components I already have ).

Here's some pictures of what I've got going so far:

I'll post an update in a couple of days, so keep an eye out.

 

[MegamindSquared]

A new update should be out very soon! Although in the meantime, I have a question for you guys...

Would you rather see RGH 1.2 (using a Matrix) on the 360 or should I stick with just using a soft mod (ABadAvatar)?

Right now the plan is to just use a soft mod for the final product, but if you guys would rather see RGH 1.2 I can put in the extra effort and get it booting.

 

[Legend]

A new update should be out very soon! Although in the meantime, I have a question for you guys...

Would you rather see RGH 1.2 (using a Matrix) on the 360 or should I stick with just using a soft mod (ABadAvatar)?

Right now the plan is to just use a soft mod for the final product, but if you guys would rather see RGH 1.2 I can put in the extra effort and get it booting.

I used to be pretty well versed in the 360 game, and my honest recommendation would be to go for the RGH 3!

While RGH 1.2 is still good especially if you have a matrix chip already on hand, I heard through the grapevine a while ago that the matrix chips specifically can put a lot of stress on the southbridge in the long run (but are still good to get the job done!), so I would look into RGH3! Less components and better boot times iirc!

 

[MegamindSquared]

I used to be pretty well versed in the 360 game, and my honest recommendation would be to go for the RGH 3!

While RGH 1.2 is still good especially if you have a matrix chip already on hand, I heard through the grapevine a while ago that the matrix chips specifically can put a lot of stress on the southbridge in the long run (but are still good to get the job done!), so I would look into RGH3! Less components and better boot times iirc!

Thanks for the reply, I am doing a Falcon board, so that's why I originally went with RGH 1.2 because at least in my experience RGH 3 isn't as reliable on the fat models as on the slim models. If I was using a slim model, it would be RGH 3 all the way.

I do think I found out why RGH 3 is less reliable on the fat models. In 15432's write up about how he created RGH 3, he mentions something very specific, "the CPU_PLL_BYPASS assertion on Fats gives a slowdown ratio of 128, while Slim revisions have a five times higher slowdown ratio of 640." He then goes on to explain that the only way for RGH 3 to work even somewhat reliably on the fat models is overclocking the southbridge. At the very least I found it an interesting read: https://swarm.ptsecurity.com/xbox-360-security-in-details-the-long-way-to-rgh3/

 

[MegamindSquared]

Update!

Ok, so after a lot of debate the first thing I decided I would tackle is trying to figure out Xbox 360 thermals while creating more space for the Wii & PS2 Slim. The most obvious choice to make more space would be to remove the fans and the heatsinks from both the CPU and GPU, but that's not possible unless you want instant overheating.

Here's the thing though, the CPU heatsink is massive compared to the GPU heatsink. There are two different CPU and GPU heatsink styles, both either have a aluminum heatsink with a copper slug/heat pipe or they are just plain aluminum.

Here are some examples:

CPU Heatsink + Copper Image Credit: (Xenon Library)

CPU Heatsink Image Credit: (Xenon Library)

GPU Heatsink + Copper Image Credit: (Xenon Library)

GPU Heatsink Image Credit: (Xenon Library)

Now, in a perfect world you could just take a GPU heatsink from a donor board put it on the CPU, and everything would be great, right? Sadly, you can't just do that because the power rail has some tall capacitors located at the right of the CPU, and these are so close that they prohibit putting the long GPU heatsink on the CPU. So, what do you do? You take the GPU heatsink, and trim it down into a square the size of the CPU heatsink base.

Here was my donor GPU heatsink as it sat:

As you can see, I bent the fins to make the line where I wanted to cut the aluminum to fit it to the proper size. Then with a little work, it was trimmed!

I then cut off the heat pipe to make some more room in the case, and besides we won't be needing it anyway.
With the heat pipe removed, I mounted the new heatsink on with some brand new thermal paste, and we were ready to rumble. Since the stock fans were out, I then went through my pile of parts and pulled out a old computer fan, and this mounted right on the heatsink almost perfectly.

Then I went and took an old replacement AMD K7 heatsink with two small fans mounted on it. I removed those fans and mounted them to both the main GPU heatsink and the secondary GPU heatsink.

\

^ Here it is (with the two fans removed).

Here's the Xbox 360 with all the fans installed.

Then I needed a place to get 12 V for the fans from, I could have pulled it from the fan header, but that's not any fun. I had to modify the cable for the disc drive anyway (to make the Xbox 360 think the disc drive was there). Luckily, there are two 12 v pins on the disc drive header.

Image Credits: (Console Mods Wiki)

So I did some soldering and wired up the three fans to the 2 12 v sources and GND.

Cable management will come later.

I then went and tested the Xbox 360, and it didn't explode, in fact it seemed to run really well, also the fans were quieter than I expected.

Then after taking a long time to get a flash drive set up, (the Xbox 360 likes FAT32, but I forgot my flash drive was exFAT, and was confused for way too long.) I was able to use the ABadAvatar exploit, and boot Aurora). After about 7 minutes of gaming off of the flash drive (Forza Horizon IV), the main temps were wildly low, the CPU was at ~53 C, with the GPU & EDRAM at ~48 C. More extensive testing to come.

So far, I'm happy with how this has turned out. I think next I'm gonna be trying to model some mounts for the other two boards, and/or figure out power distribution.

As a quick side note, I bought some of these XL4015 buck converters (which took 8 dollars out of our 20 dollar budget ). These are necessary for powering the PS2 Slim board though. I am also hopeful these won't introduce very much noise. I don't know how good they are, so we might have a noisy power rail on our hands.

I'll put out another update soon, so stay posted!