Does the xbox one s really need its ehernet controller?

Hi guys,

I got this xbox one s that wouldn’t turn on at all.

Here is what i tried this far:

I opent it up and found out the fuse in the power supply is broken and the supply has a short in it.

Checked if the mainboard had a short in it and after it didn’t tried a lab power supply.

The board will power on but after a short time turn off again (pulling roughly 1.5A)

So i found out this was because U5D4 was overheating because there was a short in the V_3p3 circuit

After some searching i found this was because U6N1 (the network chip RTL8111HM) had a short to ground and almost everything else!!

But here is the weird part: after removing the chip I checked for shorts, and they were completely gone in the board but also the chip itself.

So i thought maybe a bad soldering job but this is unlikely since i was the first guy opening the xbox (seal was intact)

After placing it back on the board the shorts were back.

I replaced it a couple of times and every time the shorts are back somehow.

Also for work I make PCB prototypes so I have quite some experience soldering/replacing chips.

Of course I can still mess it up but messing it up consistently the sameway is unlikely.

Eventually I decided to just leave it off and check if the xbox will boot up.

And it kinda does, it takes way longer before it turns off and all the voltages seem fine.

(no image output at any point this far)

So could it be that during startup the xbox is doing something like a presence check and since the networking ship is missing it is not booting up.

Ore it does not do this and there is some other problem I haven’t found yet?

If you guys know please let me know. I don’t want to order the networking chip and still not be able to fix it since the chip is quite expensive.

PS this is my first xbox repair i thought it was a nice way to get a cheap xbox since replacing chips and connectors is easy for me but i guess i got unlucky :sweat_smile:

I suspect this xbox has been the victim of power surge due to lightning ore something since the problems with the board could not have destroyed the power supply,

And both problems i found this far are at points going outside the console