NOTE: THIS ENTIRE GUIDE, PLUS ASSEMBLY GUIDES FOR THE TWO PCB VERSIONS, AND A PRICELIST FOR ASSEMBLED UNITS CAN ALL BE FOUND AT MY BLOG: http://killerbug666.wordpress.com/

Here is a guide to making your own PWM fan controller for your PS3 from components. I tried to make this as easy as possible, but if there are any questions, please ask.

Things Needed:
1x Dremel tool or similar; for trimming board down to the size needed.
1x soldering iron with pencil tip; I used a Weller WP35 with a ST5 Tip.
Solder, preferably 63/37. I prefer Kester 44 personally ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00068IJX6/ref=oss_product )
Electrical Tape
[optional but recommended] Heat-shrink tubing

1x project board with at least a 5x7 grid of circles.
1x TLC555 DIP IC ( http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=296-1857-5-ND )
1x 8-pin DIP socket (not needed, but recommened) ( http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?vendor=0&keywords=3M5473-ND )
2x 10K resistors, 0.25W - 1W
1x 0.1uf (or 100nF) ceramic capacitor with 2.54mm (0.1in) pin spacing ( http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=399-4264-ND )
1x diode ( http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=641-1410-1-ND )
1x L4931CZ33-AP Voltage Regulator for slim or fat consoles ( http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=497-7246-1-ND )
1x L4931CZ50-AP Voltage Regulator for fat consoles (not for slim) ( http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=497-5838-1-ND )
1x 100K Pot ( http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?vendor=0&keywords=CT2268-ND )
3FT Red Wire
2FT Black Wire
1FT Orange Wire


Step 1 - Cut a 5x7 grid of circles from a single-sided project board.



Step 2 - Place the 5x7 board with the copper rings facing down.



Step 3 - Run a strand of wire as shown; run two strands if the wire strands are very thin.



Step 4 - Place a small piece of electrical tape as shown.



Step 5 - Run another strand like in step 3, but over the tape (strand from step 3 should not touch strand from step 5).



Step 6 - Place the TLC555 as shown. If you are using an 8-pin DIP socket, place it in the same way, and don't slide in the TLC555 until all soldering is done.



Step 7 - Flip the board over and solder each of the 8 pins in place (along with the strands from steps 3 & 5).



Step 8 - Place the capacitor as shown, put a small bead of solder on one lead to hold it in place.



Step 9 - Place the orange wire as shown, place a small amount of solder to hold it in place (only the very end of the wire shown).



Step 10 - Place the black wire as shown.



Step 11 - Flip the board over and make the solder connections as shown in the image.



Step 12 - Place the red wire as shown and hold in in place with a small amount of solder. Then place the voltage regulator (flat face towards edge of board).



Step 13 - Make the solder connections as shown in the image. For the long c-shaped connection, it helps to run a strand of wire along the chosen path before soldering.



Step 14 - Place the first 10K resistor (yellow in image) and the diode (the black thing). Note that the resistor is not directional, but the diode is. There is a stripe on the diode; make sure it matches the direction shown in the image. You may want to use a small bead of solder to hold each in place for the next step.



Step 15 - Make the new solder connections shown in the image.



Step 16 - Place the red and black wires as shown (the ones as the top of the image; the ones at the bottom were already there).



Step 17 - Make the new solder connections shown.



Step 18 - Carefully bend the leads of the second resistor to fit the holes as shown. You will have to trim the lead that goes to the center-row hole to be just long enough to fit in the hole, but not so long that it bottoms out in the hole. This is the single hardest step of the process, so be careful.



Step 19 - Place the last red wire as shown.



Step 20 - Make the solder connections as shown; be very careful when soldering the connection on the middle row, and use enough solder that the resistor does not move easily when pressure is applied.



Now, you should have something like this:


There are thee wires towards the top, a black and two reds. These wires go to the POT. The black goes to the center lead, the red wires go to the other two leads. The red wire that is above pin 5 of the TLC555 should go to the "High Side" of the pot...the pin that you turn the knob towards when you want the fan to go faster (knob can be made to work in either direction).

There are three more wires towards the bottom (red, black, and orange). Red is spliced into the brown wire going to the fan. Black is spliced into the black wire going to the fan. Both of these wires still go to the mainboard and the fan, but now also to the controller. The last fan wire (gray) will be cut-off near the mainboard. The end going to the mainboard will be taped up with electrical tape, and the end going to the fan will connect to the orange wire from the controller. If you can, I recommend connecting the controller to a 12V AC adapter and a multimeter before soldering it into the system. Fat units should output about 0.45V at "low speed" and about 4.55V at "high speed" these numbers can vary as much as .5V depending on the specific components used. Slim units should vary from about 0.3V to 3.0V .

Once you are all done, you should have something like the picture below (assuming you braided the wires). Note that the picture below is of a unit made on a 5x8 board instead of a 5x7 board; extra row of 5 holes was used to help hold the POT wires in place, but it is not necessary.

This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 11. May 2011 @ 05:04

This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 4. April 2011 @ 16:32

Thank you for the quick reply Killerbug.
If forget the website is in Dutch so i understand your confusion about our language ;)

I'm gonna look for a 5V(+) regulator with a max. current of 250mA.

My PS3 has got YLOD a couple of weeks ago so i decided to reflow it myself with a heat gun. Offcourse not the most professionel approach but as i don't want to spend to much money on the machine i gave it a try...And fixing things with little tools is always a challenge ;)
I started off with quite a mess because i decided to take of the heat plate from the GPU chip before reflowing and when i did this i slightly hit one of the tiny capacitors near the chip.
When i looked close up with a magnified glass i saw a crack but when i thouched it the capacitor broke off.
I wanted to remove the heatplate because of the fact that when you reflow it with the plate still on the chip the thermal paste under the chip gets dryed out and lost it's connection with the plate and therefore reduce the heat transfer.
At that point i was mad i wanted to remove the plate because i screwed it up, but i also saw that the connections of the capacitor was still intact.
So i gave it a try and try to put some solder inbetween those connections so there was at least a connection between those 2 points. The gap was max. 1 mm so it was a challenge for me to sweep a tiny bit of solder between it ;)
Here you can see wich cap i mean, it's the first blue one right next to the upper left RAM chip ;


My first intension was to also remove the heatplate from the CPU chip but i didn't want to take that risk anymore! I readed that that plate was even harder to remove and i could clearly see that the GPU had created more heat than the CPU because of the color-burn marks on the motherboard frame and the old thermal paste wich was completely dryed out. I've put some thermal paste on the GPU chip but also on the 4-RAM chips.
Advantage is the direct contact of the RAM chips with the heat plate so more heat is transferred to the fan. Problem with this is that the heat plate is not glued to the chip so i glued the 4 outside corners of the heatplate in order to keep it in place.

After everything was done i re-assembled the PS3 and to my suprise... It worked fine! Even with that capacitor missing i saw no strange artifacts on the graphics so it looks ok. Only problem there is is that the fan stays in 1 gear even when the system gets hot.
When reflowing the chips i maybe over-cooked some thermal sensors i guess.
I did the reflow proces with a pre-heat period of 2-3 minutes and in the first 30sec. i added some no clean flux under the chips and in the 4th minute i heated both chips for about 50 seconds and everything was done.

Excuse me for the long story in you DIY Killerbug ;)

This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. April 2011 @ 11:51

This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 19. May 2011 @ 18:31

This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 20. June 2011 @ 18:05

This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 21. June 2011 @ 06:06