The front of the 360 is where you start the real task of taking it apart. This can be a bit nerve wracking the first time as the front faceplate panel can be rather tight to remove. Microsoft designed these to be user replaceable though and you can buy a variety of different designs to 'pimp' your console out.

The easiest way to remove the faceplate is to put your fingers into the right hand flap where you would normally plug the USB joypads and other devices and pull fairly hard forwards and left. The right side of the front of the case should then come away from the rest of the case, after which it’s easy to remove the left side.

The sides of the case are held on with clips, each side panel of the case has 3 clips at the top and 3 at the bottom. This is where the point of the opening tool comes in useful. You push the point into the air vent holes where the clips are located.

It’s easier to start with the right side panel, processing the front top and front bottom clips first and working backwards until all 6 are done. These can be tricky to locate if it is the first time doing this, they are in a fairly uniform pattern. The top clips are exactly above where the bottom ones are located. Once you find one of them you press it down with the “pointy” bit of the opening tool until you hear a little click sound. Once the 6 tabs are undone you can slide out the gray plastic side.

One easy way to find out where the clips are is to use the new replacement side and put it alongside the old one so you can see where they are located in relation to each other.

After doing the right hand side I repeated the steps with the left side where the hard drive is usually located. There are two little slots that you can see in the picture below. If you slide the point of the opening tool into those slots you can unhook the front top and bottom clips of that side.

I undid the back of the console using the metal opening tool supplied with the replacement case.

The metal opening tool has 5 tabs on the right hand side and 2 on the left. If you take a look at the back of a 360 console you will see 5 little slots on the right and 2 on the left. The idea is that you slide the 5 metal tabs into the little slots and press until you hear a click and then pull that side of the case apart a little.