So my Xbox 360 has died... for the third time in the last two weeks.

Everytime, I've duly opened it up, tweaked with the screws that apply the Red Ring of Death (RROD) fix and get it up and running again... for about two days.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So I'm at the point where I might open it once or twice more but I'm just about reaching that point where my Xbox will be defenestrated.

I knew this would probably be a future problem when I bought the thing and it's given me many, many... many hours of gaming and entertaining the nieces and nephews, so I'm not angry or upset or anything.

I do have another voucher comping up in September... do I buy an Elite? Maybe I should bite the bullet and go for that shiny new PS3? The Blu-Ray drive is certainly an attractive thought...

Then the rumours started to surface.

Leaked photographs of a motherboard... reported to be the motherboard of the new Xbox 360 Slim?

The pictures at the above link look genuine to me. I have opened my Xbox enough times to know what components to look out for. Besides, there's a giant chip in the middle of the board on which "Microsoft Xbox 360" is printed.

There is obviously a redesign to the CPU/GPU setup as opposed to the old board, so hopefully the RROD will be a thing of the past.

The rumour mill churned some more and produced this picture:

Now I don't think I want to make a guess about this one. The image above COULD be a new Xbox 360 Slim. What bothers me about that picture is that I do NOT see a DVD drive of any type. This could be because of the angle of the camera and the light falling on it or it could be a alpha version of the hardware or it could even NOT be the Xbox 360 Slim. Who knows?

At this point, there are multiple rumours flying around the internets. Some people say that the new Xbox would have to have a Blu-Ray drive to compete with Sony. Others say Project Natal might be built into it or that it will be bundled with the new Slim version of the 360.

Either way, I suspect I will be holding on to that voucher of mine until the 2010 holiday season.

By that time, most of the rumours would have been laid to rest and the real deal will (hopefully) show up in stores over here by us in December 2010.

In the meantime, I'll just be keeping myself busy by opening that old one of mine again...