Why is King Majik asking such a strange question?!

I' ve been playing with my laptop, that' s why. My new laptop' s graphcs card stomps all over RSX but Xenos stomps all over my 7900 GTX 512MB. If i take into account the fact that my laptop has technology that wouldn' t be needed in a next gen console [like the touch pad, keybard and speakers (harmon/kardon bitches!)] and factor in the very small external PSU, my laptop works out taking up less cubic space than either 360 or PS3.

I have a larger HDD, more memory and a better GPU in my laptop than can be found in PS3. BUT, when you take the internal PSU out os PS3, and replace the Blu-Ray drive with a normal DVD drive, PS3 would take up less cubic space than Xbox 360. So why are the next gen consoles so big?!

My laptop doesn' t get even remotely hot. It dosn' t even get warm. Every so often i hear very quiet fan quickly start up and blow air out of the machine, it takes less than a full second. Now obviously my processor isn' t anywhere near as fast as the CPU' s in either machine, but i' ve seen the inside of an Xbox 360 first-hand and the processor isn' t very big. Now PS3 is big because of the internal PSU and Blu-Ray drive, but what' s Xbox 360' s excuse?!

I have no problem with my 360, this isn' t about that, i simply want to know whether heat is the reason why it' s bigger than it could have been.

I mentioned noise too. I don' t hear my 360 running when i' m using it because i have the TV on [obviously], but if i turn the TV off i can hear the fans running, leading me again to believe that heat is the issue.

PS3 is, by all accounts - quiet. The drive will obviously make less noise as it' s slower that regular DVD drives, but with an internal PSU, it' d require an efficient cooling method. That said, if PS3 is as quiet as it' s being reported, then logic tells us that the machine will get hot, and hotness means crashes. At TGS there were numerus reports of PS3' s overheating, more so than Microsoft suffered it' s the run up to 360' s launch. Whether that will follow through to the retail units is still to be determined.

IF PS3 turns out to be less noisy and doesn' t get as hot as 360,then what' s Microsoft' s excuse?

Making stuff small costs money so I guess that could be one reason. Big stuff costs less.

>i dont know,...

I dont have so much of a problem with the noise,since when you put on the sound its gone,but ... well i just dont know man

Maybe they use desktop-like components on the X360, those components would be bigger, generate more heat and require more space apart from eachother to spread out the heat.

I haven' t taken apart my X360, but when I modded my Xbox I remember it had a huge ass motherboard, a giant DVD Drive, and a big hard drive, as well as alot of air space.

Perhaps the cost to make something really small is greater than leaving it as it is? And in order to make them smaller it would require more time(and $$$) and then MS would end up changing it' s original launch period and risking loosing the advantage they have now??

ORIGINAL: Evil Man

Maybe they use desktop-like components on the X360, those components would be bigger, generate more heat and require more space apart from eachother to spread out the heat.

I haven' t taken apart my X360, but when I modded my Xbox I remember it had a huge ass motherboard, a giant DVD Drive, and a big hard drive, as well as alot of air space.

Correct.

That' s why i specifically compared it to my laptop. I just dont se the logic behind doing so other than cost and it' s not like Microsoft are short of money. I mean, why not use a slot drive like Sony and Nintendo? Wii has one, and they look cooler than normal drives. Why, when the drive in my laptop is so small, does 360 have a large drive?!

It just doesn' t make sense to me. I expect they' ll minimize some of the technology and release an ' XBthreesixty' at some point but surely, when Xbox got so much critism for being so big and numb, you' d think that Microsoft - a company who can afford to throw billions about would go the extra mile and try to make it as small as possible.

My main concern for PS3 is that it will overheat much like many 360 have done.

Because your laptop drive costs like $20 more than a normal DVD drive. If they produced say, 10 million 360' s in one year, the cost adds up.

They could I don' t know, make a few games with that money or buy some developers. And there is not really any demand for small consoles, anyway. I don' t really give a shit personally.

Because your laptop drive costs like $20 more than a normal DVD drive. If they produced say, 10 million 360' s in one year, the cost adds up.

They could I don' t know, make a few games with that money or buy some developers.

I believe that is one part of the reason. As for it being big, is it? I dont find it that big, and I never found my original XBox big. When I buy a PS3 (if Blu-Ray wins the format war), I wont find it big. Think about how big a desktop computer that doesnt equal a fraction of the 360/PS3' s power is...

I think the size is ok, my HDTV box laying next to it is about 3.5 times bigger, and weight like 25lbs, so I dont care.

Its a game console, not a pc. While the gap between the two is not so huge anymore each are designed differently and for different uses.

I bet you didnt pay 600 for your laptop.

The 360 is big primarily for three reasons, it uses a heat sink, has to accomodate a HDD and has typical DVD drive. These things take up a lot of space. They could be made smaller. but if you don' t use common parts it becomes much more expensive. I' m guessing it could cost over three times more to make the 360 if you wanted to make it silent and small.

As for the noise, it has three cheap fans on the back that make most of the constant noise.

Koolance has released a water coolingh system that deals with most of the noise and keeps the temps much lower at the same time, its not cheap though.

http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=28_41&products_id=329

Am I the only one with a quiet xbox360? I got mine about 4 months ago & I swear it' s completely quiet. Have you guys heard anything about the newer versions being quiet or am I just lucky. I turned on my dreamcast today though, & that was actually really loud. I didn' t remember it being noisy before, but it' s probably because my xbox is so quiet that i noticed it now.

Original: steptechdotnet

Am I the only one with a quiet xbox360? I got mine about 4 months ago & I swear it' s completely quiet. Have you guys heard anything about the newer versions being quiet or am I just lucky. I turned on my dreamcast today though, & that was actually really loud. I didn' t remember it being noisy before, but it' s probably because my xbox is so quiet that i noticed it now.

Yes, the DC makes enough noise to wake the dead. BTW, your avatar scares me. A LOT....

It' s not just the physical size that matters. Shrinking chips also means less power, longer battery life, smaller electric bills, less heat generated, less cooling requirements, etc.

It just doesn' t make sense to me. I expect they' ll minimize some of the technology and release an ' XBthreesixty' at some point but surely, when Xbox got so much critism for being so big and numb, you' d think that Microsoft - a company who can afford to throw billions about would go the extra mile and try to make it as small as possible.

I don' t think they will do that..

It' s not like Microsoft couldn' t afford to buy the rights to modify and shrink the XBox hardware, in order to make it cheaper to produce, and in the end gain money on it.

They just wanted a new version, and I don' t believe for a second NVidia forinstance wouldn' t be interested in such a project, wich would have been mutually beneficially for both.

MS simply decided to take the venue as they have had great success with in the past, but I don' t think they will change policy if they gain market-lead, take MS Word forexample; users of Word 5.0, couldn' t open a Word-document created in Word v6.0, even tough none of the features in v6.0 were used.

That way they forced people to upgrade their Word, even tough v5.0 satisfied their customers needs.

That' s the way MS does things, always has been, and I think it allways will be..

It' s kind of sad that none of the press asks about all of MS' s trojans, each time they start blabbering about Sony' s Bluray in PS3.

Sony is just simply crazy, when it comes to shrinking.
They spent unimaginable amount of $ on research on how to shrink the Emotion chip forinstance. It wouldn' t suprise me if they were still pouring in $, trying to shrink Emotion even more..

not only that but if they made the console smaller then it would increase the chance of overheating, just look what happend to the ps2

I had 2 dreamcasts. The first one I got was insanely quiet. It broke after about a year and a half so I got a new one. The new one' s disc drive was really friggn' loud when loading the discs, " GRRRR-GRRRR-GRRRRR-GRRRR" .

I also have a noisy Dreamcast drive... Very noisy, and you could always tell in shenmue if it was gonna be a cut scene because of the loading sounds... great stuff.

Also making the switch from old fat model ps2 to the newer quieter fat ps2s was great, it was such a difference...

Both of my dreamcasts were noisy, I got a japanese one in 1998, then that broke and I bought a U.S. one like in 2000, they both sounded horrible.

In skies of arcadia you could tell when a random battle was going to come up because you could hear the disc spin like crazy for a good 10 seconds before the battle popped up.

That' s the same with my SCPH-3009 (ish) ps2. You can always tell when more enemies are going to spawn, because you can hear the laser a-clicking away.

My quiet dreamcast was a USA 9/9/99 one (OMGZ MY BIRTHDAY). I think the reason the drive was so quiet was because it was on the verge of breaking the whole time. Cause I' m the only one i know who had a quiet dreamcast.