Without a doubt, Microsoft's E3 surprise, the brand-new, redesigned and significantly slimmer Xbox 360, has made quite a lot of current and would-be Xbox owners wonder just what they should expect from this next-gen machine, not only in terms of performance, but hardware as well. And not long after the gaming console went on sale, the first tear-down hit the web.

Carried out by the guys over at AnandTech, the dismemberment of Microsoft's new 250GB Xbox 360 revealed quite a few interesting surprises, albeit the process itself is in fact pretty destructive and will ultimately lead not only to the voiding of the warranty, but also to users having a pretty rough time putting the thing back together.

Anyway, leaving these details aside (you can find out plenty more on this topic by checking out the aforementioned source), it's interesting to see that Microsoft has done a pretty interesting job at minimizing all of the available components, starting right from that CGPU unit (integrated CPU/GPU on a single die), which enables the console to not only generate less heat, but also to be more silent and smaller, overall.

That's partially due to the fact that the fresh gaming system boasts a single large heatsink and some serious dampening elements.

Other interesting components found inside the console include a 16MB Hynix NAND module, plus the HANA scaler/video encoder chip. Additionally, the motherboard sports two SATA ports directly on the board itself to support the new HDD tray. Speaking of which, it's worth mentioning the company decided to go with the Hitachi HTS545025B9SA00 1.5Gbps SATA hard drive for the new Xbox 360 unit, the storage unit in question spinning at 5400RPM and featuring an 8MB buffer.

These are only a few of the changes applied inside the new Xbox 360 (we were all quite aware of the changes to the exterior when this thing was first introduced, back at E3), but it ultimately remains to be seen just how they'll affect (hopefully, in a positive way) the overall functioning behavior of the fresh console, including the way in which it will work with that Kinect gimmick everyone's been waiting for.


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