I've recently been given a faulty ps3 with YLOD (an old fat 60GB version with 4x usb and card readers), so i followed gilksy's youtube videos and reflowed the advised areas of the motherboard. I didnt have a heat gun so just used a powerful hairdryer on its max setting for 30-45 seconds per area. I know people say they dont get hot enough, but it did seem to. Also, i don't have any Arctic 5 so i just used some old PC thermal compound i had kicking around (works fine on all the PC's i've built/modded), but much cheaper than Arctic paste.
After i rebuilt it all, i got it on and working for 5-10 minutes, configured the wifi, etc. Then it froze.
On the next restart the screen output froze after a few seconds but the controller and sound still worked, so i switched it off let it fully cool down, then it wouldnt start.
It would come 'on', the green light would appear, it accepted a disk and the blue light came on, but nothing else, no picture, no sound, no eject, etc.
So i tried the system restore mode, by holding the power button for 5 seconds and it beeps, keep holding it and it goes to standby again, let go, hold again for 5 seconds, keep holding and it double beeps, and as if by magic i was into the system restore screen, with visual output, controller function and everything!
I figured at this point, i dont want to try a system restore and it freezes mid-write, so i just chose 'restart', it froze again!!!
Now it's back to not displaying a picture, no eject function, no controller function, etc. Except this time I can't get onto the system restore mode with the power button combo.
I don't know if it's worthwhile buying some Arctic 5 and just re-pasting it, or if i should look into replacing the motherboard completey, i'm guessing it's the GPU that is having the issues (due to when the screen output froze but other functionality remained) but this is the first time i've played about 'inside' a ps3.
Can anyone shed any light on this issue, or give me any suggestions i might not have considered?
Thanks :)
TL;DR - fixed YLOD with a hairdryer reflow, now it looks like GPU is overheating and system starts with green light but nothing else, whats the next step?
1) Use a heat gun, hairdryer doesnt get hot enough.
2) Cheap thermal paste is cheap for a reason; it isnt as good as the expensive stuff.
So I advice a real reflow, if you dont have a heat gun try it in an oven. And get some proper thermal paste. The cheap stuff may be ok for a pc as you can add more fans, but the PS3 has all it's components crammed into as little space as possible.
Also in the ylod thread, someone suggests atting rubber/silicon pads under the psu and disc drive to lift them off the heatsink as psu adds too much heat to the heatsink.
