Power consumption, reconstruction and Final Thoughts
For our power consumption testing we took wattage readings from the wall using a “Watts Up! Plus” and ran each test at least three times to find an average. 

The New Xbox 360 S "Slim" Teardown: Opened and Tested - General Tech 40

Several things jump out at us when looking at the total power consumption of these two different Xboxes the first of which being the “off” state where the new Valhalla platform provides a 2.6x improvement in standby power.  This is likely due not only to changes on the chip and motherboard but in the power brick as well.  At idle, where we are simply sitting at the Xbox Dashboard, the new Xbox 360 S is only drawing 70 watts while the older Xbox 360 nearly hit 100 watts resulting in 40% higher power consumption.  Finally, under a gaming load, I found the Xbox 360 S to top out at around 99.2 watts while the Falcon-based system nearly hit 130 watts resulting in a 30% advantage for the updated console.

(Note: our load testing was done in Batman: Arkham Asylum as it appeared to put more of a strain on the system than either Assassin’s Creed 2 or Modern Warfare 2.)

The Reconstruction Process

Putting it all back together was quite a bit simpler and safer than taking it all apart and we decided to do a time-lapse video of the process if you’d like to see how it went!



Noise Testing

While I didn’t break out the sound meter for the test, I did break out the microphones.  In this video below I demonstrate the noise differences between our older Falcon-based Xbox 360 and the new Xbox 360 S.  The differences are really noticeable!



Closing Thoughts

While we still don’t know exactly what is going on under that final hood that is the Xbox 360 XCGPU heat spreader we do know that Microsoft is making some interesting decisions about the technology going into the console.  They have spent what is likely a good amount of time and money on developing this new platform which indicates they plan on sticking with it for a bit longer than many gamers may have expected.  The combination of a CPU/GPU hybrid processor enabled Microsoft to make the system quieter, cooler and helps it consume as much as 40% less power when running at idle.  Obviously for Microsoft this SHOULD mean fewer returns and dead systems due to heat, at least we hope.  For gamers that find themselves outside of their warranty it means a better option that might have otherwise existed when faced with an RRoD. 

Did you like this look at console technology?  Anything we left out you would like to see in the future?  Just drop us a note!

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