About a month ago, I stumbled upon an Xbox One on the street and, feeling adventurous, took it home. I didn’t have a way to test it because I was missing the power supply unit (PSU). Recently, I decided to open it up out of curiosity and found it pretty dusty but no signs of water damage. I also bought another Xbox for about $10 to use as a donor for parts, but that one had a busted PSU too. It told me it needed 5V and 12V, so I tried using a 12V battery I had, and the PSU was still outputting 5V, so I cobbled together a Frankenstein build. The found Xbox seemed fine; the fan just spun, while the bought one literally caught fire when I tried to power it up. Now, I’m trying to boot up the found Xbox with an HDMI cable but after some weird noises from the PSU, it just stopped working. Now it just spins the fan and does nothing. I haven’t dared to touch the burnt one. How can I fix this?
3 Answers
If you’ve got a knack for electronics, you could take a look at the PSU or even the motherboard of the found Xbox. But unless you’re willing to dive deep into repairs, you might just want to cut your losses and buy a new one.
Sounds like you might be in over your head with this one! If you’re not experienced in fixing consoles and soldering, I’d recommend just buying a working one instead of trying to fix these. The risk of electrical fire is pretty high when you mix and match parts like that.
Yeah, it definitely seems sketchy trying to power a console with mismatched parts. It might save you a lot of trouble just to get a new one.
Honestly, I’m not surprised neither of them want to fire up. Finding electronics like that can be hit-or-miss, and usually, they aren’t working. Might need to face the reality that they could be dead.
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Agreed! Getting them to work again might cost more than just getting a second-hand one that’s known to work.