They're all horrible useless pieces of plastic. Don't buy them.
What, you want more? Okay. Well, in case you haven't seen them on the shelves of your local game store, console cooling fans are clip on devices for the Wii, 360 and PS3 that supposedly help stop your console getting too hot. Because everyone's heard about those overheating problems that plague all three of next general consoles, right?
Er, no. And this is where you might detect the faint whiff of bulls.. I mean snake oil. The problems with the 360 red ringing do apparently have something to do with the console getting too hot. But the PS3? And the Wii? Both those consoles run pretty cool. What actually happened was that these cooling devices first appeared as 360 add-on devices, but were then produced for the Wii and PS3, presumably to cash in on any console owners who lived in fear of their devices going supernova.
So what about the 360 - surely these cooling fans must do some good there, right? No - they're just as useless there. The fans sit at the back of the console, over the existing fan. To actually make any real difference to the console's temperature, you'd have crack the console open and install a better set of fans. Which you can do, but it would invalidate the warranty. Plus, some of these fans, the ones that sit between the power socket on the 360 and the power lead, can apparently cause electrical shorts and damage the console.
The bottom line is that if your console is overheating to the point where it stops working, there's either something wrong with the console, in which case you should get it repaired, or there's something blocking the ventilation. These cheap plastic con jobs should be avoided. |
