Xbox 360 ATX power supply

Posted Jan 5th 2006 2:00AM by Eliot Phillips
Filed under: xbox hacks

Reader Ran Mokady took a pretty big gamble with this project, but didn't really have any other choice: his power supply was broken and he couldn't get a replacement. He ended up replacing it with a standard ATX power supply. Follow along for all of the details.

For anyone who is having problems with their Xbox 360 power supply, or who (like me) have managed to end up with a burnt out PSU and can't get a replacement, here's how I managed to run the console off a standard ATX computer power supply.

The added advantage for me, living in a 220V country and having bought a 110V console from Japan is that I no longer need a huge stepdown transformer to run my console.

I have been running my console off a 250W computer PSU for a week now with no problems � of course there are no guarantees and if you decide to do what I did I accept no responsibility for what happens, the only thing I know for sure is that it worked for me.

Here's what I did:

Cut the cable

If you cut the Xbox power cable (I cut mine near the power supply to leave me with the maximum length of cable) and peel back the grey sleeve, the shielding and the internal black sleeve you will see 10 wires running through the cable. 4 Yellow, 4 Black, Red and Blue
cut cable
A quick continuity check showed that all the black wires were connected together as were all the yellow ones. The Xbox PSU says on it it produced 12V and 5V so I decided to be brave and assume that the color coding on the Xbox cable was the same as the one on an ATX (PC) power supply.

Connect it up

Find an ATX power supply. The one I had was rated at 250W, the Xbox PSU says 203W on it � so I figured it should be ok.

I cut the wires of one of the hard disk type connectors and connected them to the Xbox cable �

Black to all the black wires from the Xbox cable
Yellow to all the yellow wires from the Xbox cable
Red to the red wire from the Xbox cable

tape

Rig the ATX power supply to power up

In order to get an ATX power supply to power up you have to connect pin 14 (the green wire) of the large ATX power connector to ground.

Cut the green wire from pin 14 and the ground (black) wire from pin 13 and connect them together.

motherboard

Connect the cable to the Xbox 360 and go�

Connected the power cable to the Xbox, power the PSU up and then the Xbox and you have a working xbox 360 running off an atx power supply.

final

Reader Comments

(Page 1)

1. I do believe you are suppose to use a resistor between the green and ground on an ATX. But I agree, hooking the blue to the green may be beneficial (or maybe not).

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by hawkeyeaz1

2. I looked at a US powersupply i believe it showed 5 amps at 120 volts so fallowing watts law volts times amps 120*5 should be around 500 watts or so you might want to get a bigger psu also you might be able to wake up the psu by connecting green psu to blue xbox hopefully that will work.

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Mike

3. What was wrong with the power supply? Would it not have just been easier to fix the PSU in the xbox? I understand that fixing the PSU that came with the the would not be very hackish. But perhaps it would have saved you some time?

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by brandon kinman

4. maybe pin 14 should be hooked to the blue cable. If the blue cable goes to ground maybe it "wakes up" the power supply.

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by jungec

5. All I can say is you're brave... I'd worry to much to try any type of hack on an expensive machine like that.

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Pedersencato

6. A Japanese Xbox 360? Crazy!

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Joshua Holbrook

7. Would a original xbox psu be able to have enough to power a 360?

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by justin pierringer

8. Ever hear of heatshrink tubing? Wicked dirty job on that cable. It's beautiful!

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Pocketbrain

9. Replacement wasn't an option because no one sells spares at the moment and because I imported the xbox from Japan so the cost of sending it back would have been prohibitive. The added advantage is that I now have a 220V psu where the original was 110V. Last but not least, this was much more fun...!

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Ran mokady

10. intresting. but you might want to use a different rail for each power connection since power supplys are not designed for or capable of sending all of its power across one rail.

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by duffman3030

11. That's great... a even BIGGER xbox power supply! all in all, that's a great hack

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Justin wong

12. Cool tip.. but do yourself a favor and invest in some heatshrink tubing... That electrical tape looks pretty gnarly ;)

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by daniel

13. What about the blue wire? Did you leave it disconnected?

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by tnkgrl

14. Why wasn't replacement an option?

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Joshua Holbrook

15. Thanks for the tip duffman3030. tnkgrl - Yes, I left the blue wire disconnected. I suspect (but can't prove) that it is used to wake up the original xbox psu in some way.

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by Ran mokady

16. Hi, could someone give me the power supply specs of the japanese version of xbox360? my country uses 220v and i would like to know wat stepdown transformer should i get. thanks

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by xp

17. So anyone have a detailed diagram on how to do this yet because it seems there was some discretion over the first. Thanks.

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by bklyncyclones

18. i know how to copy xbox360 games wahoooo totally by eroor...take the dvd drive and plugs from the main board in the xbox360 and insert the xbox360 dvd tray into a pc with the microsoft leads patch them up and volia it will read the xbox games to you hard drive using a well known program then burn onto dvd-9 dual layer disks complete cloned copy i cant tell program here but pls e mail me ill will tell u

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by stace

19. WELL I FINALLY GAVE IN AND BOUGHT A NEW XBOX360 CORE SYSTEM FROM EBAY SO IM GONNA TAKE OUT THE POWER PACK AND KEEP FOR MYSELF AND JUST STORE OR SELL THE CONSOLE AND OTHER ITEMS WITH IT ANYONE INTRESTED IN THE CONSOLE DROP ME A LINE ITS BRAND NEW REGION 1 USA/CANADA WITH RECIPT FROM BESTBUY STACEHUGHES16@HOTMAIL.COM ILL BE SELLING IT FOR 150 DOLLERS OR 150 POUND UK

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by stace

20. WHOOPS I MEANT 150 UK POUNDS

Posted at 3:08PM on Sep 3rd 2006 by stace

Next 20 Comments

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry: inappropriate or purely promotional comments may be removed. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br> tags.