Cause

Cause of the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death

It is believed that there are three main causes of the Xbox Red Ring of death.  Also referred to as the three red lights error.

1) Console Overheating

2) Problems within the GPU (most likely due to failure in the thermal paste, ie. Overheating)

3) Problems in power supple/ power brick.

The number one cause for Xbox Red Rings is console overheating. If you think about it the Xbox 360 is essentially a high powered gaming computer. Therefore it is under enormous amounts of stress and produces massive amounts of heat. Over time this white/grayish paste much like tooth paste, called thermal paste starts to degrade and soon fails. The thermal paste is designed to increase the surface area between the GPU and the heat sink. After many several house of intense play  this thermal paste starts to break down, and soon causes failure within the Xbox 360.

The second most common problem is closely related to the overheating of the Xbox 360. If the overheating Xbox is not attended to, then there will be damage to the GPU or general processing unit. That is why it is essential to catch the errors before it becomes a major problem, in example, one two or three red lights. Once your Xbox hits four red lights you have no option but to either send it back to Microsoft or replace the thermal paste. See our FREE DIY Fix Guide on how to do this.

Problems within the power brick, or power supply of the Xbox 360 will cause it to give red light errors as well. Please see the Diagnosis page to diagnose your Xbox Red Ring issue.