I bought a refurb one. It was a great decision...cheaper and it's never crashed in the past 3 something years I've had it. I know plenty of people who have suffered the RRoD, though, so I'm not even going to pretend that problems don't exist.

 

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I got one RRod on my original xbox. I don't remember how long it lasted, but it was at least a few years.

I haven't had a problem with the replacement they sent me.

I like console gaming, but I think this is the last generation of consoles I'm going to mess around with.

Oh, 40, why not say 80, or 200? Fact is, you don't have any warranties lasting for more than 3 years anyway in general, and plenty of products using old leaded solder have failed over the years, albeit usually not for solder reason specifically.

I'd say if they last 20 years that's double what you can expect at those price points, anything else is a bonus.

 

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The whole problem with RoHS compliance is the fragile nature of non-lead solder. Non-lead solder is simply more brittle and susceptible to fatigue and stress fracturing. If this was the root cause of console failures it would be pandemic and wide spread across all consoles, and more to the point all electronics.

RoHS compliance and reliability issues stemming from it are largely a handling issue with the solder paste to begin with. You can't handle lead free solder as carelessly as you did with lead based solder. Follow the handling instructions of the solder paste, tweak your reflow and wave profiles to match the melting and cooling properties of the new solder alloys and it's pretty much a non-issue.

 

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