Halo 3 and Xbox 360 forums are buzzing with claims that the new Halo 3 engine is cooking Xbox 360 consoles. They claim that the graphics engine in the new Microsoft game is so powerful that it is creating heat when new textures and backgrounds are run resulting in the now famous “Red ring of death” problem happening.

One Halo fan writes on the Bungie Forum: “Halo 3 is making me mad. It freezes my 360 for no reason. My 360 is having all these issues all thanks to Halo 3. For the 10 minutes I got to play it, it was very fun. I have red rings for first time”.

Another one writes: “Listen people I could have E-mailed this to Microsoft but I rather hear from the Halo community or part of the Halo community. This overheating issue has got to stop. See this is the worst case scenario for anyone who is about to play Halo 3, your about to play Halo 3 and all of a sudden your 360 dies on you! I mean come on people we have to do something about this! I mean what are we going to do us the Halo community and all the rest of the dedicated gamers, Microsoft has to fix this problem this problem could possibly be the death of Halo 3! But what do you guys think the “Halo community”?” [sic].

One Halo 3 fan raises the issue that the problem is most probably happening in old Xbox 360 consoles that have not been replaced by Microsoft.

He writes: “It was probably on the brink of Red-Ringing for a while, and due to the need to process the textures/etc. of Halo 3, it just overloaded rather than drop the Frame Rate. Sorry bro, you’ll just need to send it in or something. At least it’s not the game!”

Microsoft recently admitted that there were major problems with the Xbox 360 games console. As a result the software giant set aside A$1.5 billion to fix the problems with console.

SmartHouse at the time reported that retailers were claiming that up to 30% of consoles have had to be returned in Australia.

New Xbox 360 consoles appear to have a new processor that is aimed at eliminating the heat problems.

The Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360 Console  appears to be among the first Xbox 360 consoles to get the new, reduced CPU chip. Dubbed the “Falcon Xbox 360,” the reduced CPU should prevent the woes of the “Red Ring of Death” (overheating). Xbox360 user JWSpeed, dissected one of the new Halo 3 Special Edition Xbox 360 to find the new CPU. If you want to find out if your Xbox 360 has the newer CPU, check out how to probe your Xbox 360 using a flashlight, without voiding your warranty here on the Xbox.com forums.