For a while now my XBox Series X had been insanely loud when gaming. I assumed it was because the games I played were demanding on the hardware (Baldue's Gate 3 and Divinity Original Sin 2 for example), but yesterday evening I started „Drop Duchy“ which is fun and very much not so demanding and my XBox sounded like a jet about to take off.
So, I spent this morning cleaning it up and - of course - it was full of dust!
As you can see there was really a ton of dust, which is no surprise given I’ve not cleaned the Xbox properly since I’ve got it 5-ish years ago!
Luckily, there’s a good guide on ifixit about opening and cleaning it. The back cover was easy to open and all the parts inside are easy to reach. Only the fan itself gave me trouble because one of the three screws immediately broke when I tried to unscrew it. Welp, no fan cleaning for me I guess.
Still, cleaning the other parts was enough and I was able to remove a lot of dust!
So… did it work? Yes! The XBox makes almost no noise at all now and runs smoothly again, and I’ve made a reminder for next year to clean it again. 🧼
Hi! I'm Kevin Gimbel
