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The Xbox 360 was the primary console I purchased after turning into a PC gamer a couple of years prior, and oh, what a machine that was. I nonetheless bear in mind sitting on my mattress and staring in awe on the next-gen graphics in entrance of me as I sawed by Locust Horde scum in Gears of War. But earlier than lengthy, I used to be again on PC, and so it has been ever since. That’s why this sleeper construct is making my nostalgia gland do somersaults.
Reddit person RazQ_ has put a fully-fledged gaming PC inside an Xbox 360 Slim: “I happened to have a dead Xbox 360 slim console and this project was born as I half jokingly suggested we [the Redditor and their husband] should build a PC inside this console.”
And so they did, and they’ve been living with this console-PC for over a year. They tell me it’s still “running strong” though.
The brass tacks I’m sure many of you are waiting for are the specs, which RazQ_ has kindly shared with us all:
|
CPU |
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D |
|
GPU |
Gigabyte RTX 4060 Low Profile (using GPU extension cord) |
|
RAM |
TeamGroup T-Create 32 GB DDR5-6000 |
|
PSU |
HDPLEX 250 W ATX |
|
SSD |
Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB |
|
Case |
Xbox 360 slim, front USB upgraded to 3.0 |
|
Wi-Fi card |
A cheap laptop card from Amazon with Bluetooth |
The first thing that stuck out to me was that 250 W power supply, as it seemed like a low wattage for an RTX 4060 build. However, after looking around a bit online, it looks like others have managed to get by with 250 W, especially if there’s some under-volting involved.
At any rate, things must surely need to be kept as slim and as low-power as possible to be kept inside such a tight space. Surprisingly, though, the Redditor claims the 360 Slim form factor wasn’t too bad in the air cooling department: “The Xbox 360 Slim actually has grids on both sides that makes it easy for the air to exit.”
Which isn’t to say that getting it to keep cool was straightforward. To achieve cool enough temps, the foam tunnels pressing against the top cover helped, as they helped keep the cool and hot air separate, and a fan was added, too. RazQ_ tells me that there is some thermal throttling in some games if it sits vertically because it blocks one of the air vents, and before the foam walls were installed, “the PC would instantly shoot up to 90 °C under load for the GPU.”
The Redditor says temps might be improved if they added another small Noctua fan next to the GPU to push hot air out. As it stands, the CPU maxes out at 77 °C and the GPU at 80–85 °C on max load—the former was confirmed with a Cinebench test the Redditor just did earlier today.
It seems like the PC stays cool enough for some pretty strenuous work, too:
“I do take it with me if I go overseas with a portable monitor instead of my laptop if I want to do something intensive like Blender 3D renders of video editing during my trip. At my home office I use my regular big cased gaming PC for work.”
It doesn’t sound like it was easy to cram everything inside the 360’s frame, however: “Lots of dremel was used for the metal frame and I also drilled and installed the pegs for the motherboard to sit in the metal frame.” The cable management in particular (see the image above) seems like it would have been somewhat of a nightmare to, well, manage. Nice iFixit screw there to help, though—good choice.
An interesting part of the build is the original RF (radio frequency) PCB that’s been left in there, connected via USB to allow for wireless Xbox 360 controller connection. This was achieved using this Github project.
When I heard this—as if the entire ‘inserting it inside a console’ factor wasn’t sufficient to make me surprise—I used to be curious whether or not the couple use this gaming PC extra like a console or a pc. I requested the Redditor:
“Currently the PC is running Windows 10. I have all my emulated games, steam games and installed pc games synced up to an open source launcher called Playnite. It starts automatically when you boot up the PC and you can simply choose the game and start playing instantly. It has controller navigation support, which makes it really good for this. I have a set of profiles and configs for individual games in emulators which takes time but I find that also satisfying.”
I’ve used Playnite myself and may verify it really works reasonably properly as a central sport hub.
The solely actual difficulty appears to be the massive energy button not working, which I’d discover a bit of annoying, myself. They reckon the issue is to do with the circuit board for the reason that energy button is within the RF PCB. But they’ve hooked the on/off performance to the eject button as a substitute, which will get the job achieved:
“I didn’t want to cut any traces as I wanted to keep the RF board function (wireless receiver) and instead wired the eject button into it. It doesn’t really matter as both are touch buttons [but it does] suck sometimes as it’s easy to accidentally hit them. My goal is to install a custom physical button under the power button that would not block the LEDs.”
At the top of the day, with a bit of effort—okay, perhaps important effort—they’ve ended up with a terrific sleeper construct contained in the body of the most effective consoles of the final couple of a long time. An X3D processor and RTX 40-series chip, even when that may be a lower-end one, isn’t any joke.
I’ve been utilizing an RTX 4060 laptop computer—the GPU through which is much less highly effective than a desktop RTX 4060—and it is completely advantageous for some mild or average gaming in 2025, particularly at decrease resolutions, which is presumably what this construct is getting used for with the transportable monitor. Lovely stuff.
Best mini PC 2025
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