Yesterday I was opening up and inspecting an xbox 360 slim that I got on fleaBay for 18 dollars. According to the seller the previous owner had opened it to try to fix the DVD drive, so it should have booted. But it did not and I think the seller maybe lied or maybe didn't know, whatever, won't buy from him again probably, but its still worth it in parts for 18 dollars. Anyhow first time I plugged it in fan ran and no signal which I think is the worst sign of failure on these. But, yesterday I plugged it in again and fan did not run. So I thought hmm maybe this will work hooked up the power button but no, noise came from both the power and eject buttons but console would not boot (no signal, and fan didn't turn on). So proceeded to strip off the case as I thought it could be grounding to case removed all SATA wires etc. Still no boot. About after the 10th boot try as I was wondering if the motherboard was getting power, I saw smoke and smelled something fry near the back end of the CPU heatsink. So I assume, I guess it was getting power... but its probably done for now (see all this time cooling fan had not been running and I couldn't tell if it was technically on or off). So I think may as well strip the stuff off the board first I will take off the heatsink as it looks somewhat valuable, proceed to try to remove the x-clamp (turned motherboard upside down). I have watched a few videos of people doing this, did it on a phat, was not hard really. I have the xecuter clamp removal tool. Well I managed to get one leg off but the other 3 they would just NOT COME OFF, no matter what. applied pressure in the opposite directions, etc, they would absolutely not come off, ended up having to use a claw hammer and pull as hard as I possibly could to get the remaining 3 off! Now this damaged the motherboard greatly but it was probably already garbage anyway. And there is really no reason to take off that heatsink because the slim runs cool and because of this the thermal paste is still in liquid form and is fine usually. Well as far as I can tell there's not much to it I had the right tool etc, I will do some more research but if anyone can tell me perhaps why the 3 mounts would not come off, or better way to take it off, I would be grateful thank you Also is there anything on the market that you could use instead of this x-clamp for the slim because I do not like this stupid clamp Also does other people know what might be the cause of failure on the slim because I don't think it overheated and I didn't see anything wrong. Thanks very much