"110V" really means 110V

Long story short: I’ve been to the US a few weeks ago and I thought I’d pick up a new Xbox 360 250GB while I was there, seeing as those are hard to find in China. I assumed its power supply would accept both 110V and 220V (like my PS3 and most modern PCs and laptops.) Well, it did not.

Of course, I did not just plug it in and watch explode. I first opened up the power supply (not an easy feat, let me tell you) and only plugged it in after noticing the board inside had “250V” written on it, with a check mark next to it. Not sure what that meant though. It still blew up after I plugged it in.

I already had a plan B from the moment I bought the Xbox: the power supply output 12V and 5V, much like a regular PC power supply. So I bought a (mini) ATX power supply and went online to see if I could find the pinout. Plenty. When I plugged in the ATX power source, I measured the voltage on a few pins, but got nothing. Then I remembered the fact that an ATX power supply does not really turn on until the PC tells it to. This is done by shorting pin 14 of the ATX plug (green wire) to ground (black, any will do.) Once I did that, I got all the power I needed.

The pinout on the Xbox side was harder to come by. I had found a few for the old Xbox 360, but none for the new slim model. Fortunately there were some hints on the PSU’s board:

Yellow 12V
Black GND
Red 5VSB
Blue PS_ON
Gray RSENSE

I thought I’d check what I could get away with: I connected the yellow wire from the Xbox to the yellow wire of the PSU. Same for the red wires, and black wires, matching the colors. Then, I turned on the power supply by connecting the green wire on pin 14 to a black wire. I pressed the button on the Xbox: success!