Is the Red Ring of Death Finally a Thing of the Past?

If you’ve owned an Xbox 360, chances are you’ve been on the phone with customer support trying to get a coffin for your now-dead console. While some models fail due to DVD drives breaking down or graphics cards going kabloey, the most common cause of premature Xbox death is the dreaded general hardware failure, aka the Red Ring of Death. If reports are to be believed however, Microsoft has now fixed the issue once and for all.

Word on the street is that earlier this summer Microsoft began quietly shipping Xboxes featuring the Jasper chipset, which is smaller and runs cooler than its older brothers. Conventional wisdom holds that Microsoft’s previous chipsets were the primary cause of the dreaded RRoD. According to JoeyGadget, the new Jaspers are found in all 360s produced after June 6, 2008, falling in lot #8031 and up. Therefore, if you’re in the market for a new system, it would be good to check and see if you can get one that falls within those parameters.

Due to the fact that Microsoft never officially disclosed the reason behind the RRoD, the company has not commented on the release of the Jasper chipset. Therefore, we don’t know if these chips are also going into replacement and refurbished Xboxes, or if they are reserved solely for new models. What we do know is that these little beauties are out there, and hopefully that means you won’t have to see those horrid flashing red lights ever again. Now then, if only Microsoft could take care of all the other things that tend to break on their machine then we might finally have a little closure.

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