Identifying an Opus motherboard based Xbox 360 might not be as easy as I first thought. It looks like a 175w power supply on an post RRODed Xbox 360 with no HDMI might not be a sign of it being an Opus.
A commenter pointed out that Microsoft normally does not require you to send in and power adaptor for a RRODed Xbox unless you Xbox has died more than once.
I ran this dilemma by some engineers around the water cooler and they said that the mother board design might have a resistor network on the power port. This would effectively let them use either a 175w or 205w power supply without cooking the circuitry. So if you have an "Xenon" Xbox 360 die on you and you send it back to Microsoft while keeping your old power adaptor and you are lucky enough to get a new Opus motherboard with a 60nm CPU you will be able to use the old power brick (and they are a brick).
I am sort of at a loss as to how to easily identify an Opus based Xbox 360 without having to open the case. Hopefully they will put a new manufacturing date and serial number on it. If you get an Xbox 360 with no HDMI but a manufacturing date past May 2008 that might be an Opus.
Still if anyone is sure that they got one let us know.
Just a thought but when the Falcon equiped consoles started shipping some guys noticed you could tell from how much inductors you could see by the bottom grill
"Put your flashlight directly up against the console's bottom grill and look for the 2 or 3 inductor rings (which appear as a small ring wrapped in bare copper wire)."
2 flat inductors + an empty slot (white circle on the MB) was the sign.
Maybe that will work with Opus too.
I hope someone finds something like that.
Since the Opus uses the Falcon chipset on a new motherboard that is designed to fit a Xenon case I am not sure if the old methods of identifying hardware will work. I’ve also never actually seen a final one out in the wild.
Given the price of the new packs, i think we'll see an opened-up Xbox360 soon on the internet ( i know i'm an optimistic! ;-) )