I have a 40GB PS3 that I bought in the spring of 2008. In February of this year, it got the YLOD. I saw it coming. Starting in the winter of 2010, the fans kicked into overdrive after about 20 minutes of UC2 online. My PS3 is in a wide open space with nothing within a 2' radius around it.
I had already done reading on how to reflow. I refuse to throw away a $400 investment. I finally found some time last week and pulled it off. It was very easy. Applied a nice thin layer of arctic silver thermal compound. I thoroughly cleaned out ALL of the caked on dust from the mobo, the fans...everything.
It runs like a dream now. Silent and cool. After 2 hours/night of FF XIII for the past 4 days, it's blowing out cool air.
My question is, how long can I expect this to last? In all of my reading, I've come upon so many threads where peeps have had the unit fail only 3 months after a reflow. Is it possible that they just did a bad job? Could they have missed something? Or is this just a temporary solution?
I just bought another phat 40GB YLOD PS3 on ebay for $78. It's the same model as mine, so I'm familiar with the interior and will be able to reflow it in under an hour. The guy says its never been opened. I guess I'll find out when I open it. I'll probably see how much it sells for if I can get it running again. Are older models more susceptible to failures after the first reflow? How about reballing? When is there a real need to look into that?
Thanks in advance!
EDIT - I honestly had every intention of posting this in the "non-hacking" PS3 section. I don't know how I messed that up. Please move to the appropriate forum..
How long is a piece of string? It all depends e.g.:
How warm is the room it is in?
How much space does the ps3 have around it?
Is it place vertically or horizontally?
How much dust is in the room?
Is the Sun shining on it?
How long do you use it per day?
Lots of things can affect it. Only certain thing is that it most likely will crash again, just depends how long I guess.
Getting a good thermal paste is a good step, nest to spend the extra money on the good stuff. If you checked how much was on the chips from manufacture you can see how much they skimped on thermal paste; there is hardly any!
Second I read a tip from one of the main threads. Buy some silicone or rubber pads, then place these on the corner of the psu and disc drive. This pushes them up so they are not touching the heatsink, especially the psu as that create the most heat. So the gap now allow extra air flow between the psu and main heatsink, before the psu would add to the heatsink and hence the cpu below it.
Placing the console horizontally spreads the heat as well and helps cool the ps3.
Dont get those addon fans unless you know the way it will circulate the air. I hear some ppl got ones which instead of pulling the hot air out, pushed it back in instead and helped heat it up faster!
If done properly, a YLOD fix should not have an expiration date. Obviously use quality thermal compound and make sure not to lose or misplace any of the "rubber" pads while you are assembling the system...but then you have to deal with the cause of the YLOD; the low fan speed. External add-on fans sometimes do a bit to help, but the real solution is to correct the internal fan speed.
I just started a blog dedicated to this very problem...it is only just getting started, but it already has the assembly guide. I will be posting pictures and price lists for the assembled units that I sell in the next few days:
http://killerbug666.wordpress.com/
Good info guys. Thanks. I've read your fan guide before KB, at ps3hax. It's very good. The blog is very informative and I've got it bookmarked now. Great source of info! Don't know if I'll run across a 20GB model fan, but if I do, I'll send it over if you still need it.
I just reflowed an old 80GB CECH01 PS3. It was in bad shape. Was definitely done before. I don't think it will last long. It's working now, but it gets really hot really fast. I noticed a lot of heat coming from the motherboard metal frame, and then realized that the power supply itself was super heated - only within minutes of turning it on. The power supply is the older model with a metal frame. Could this be a faulty power supply, coupled with poor design (quick and deadly heat transfer from metal frame to motherboard frame)? They go for $30 on ebay. I really want to salvage this one. The BWC ps3's with the 4 usb ports and flash card inputs are hard to come by.
I want to get started on the internal fan speed project soon, but I don't think it would help with this power supply that super heats in 5 minutes.
Originally posted by big03: Second I read a tip from one of the main threads. Buy some silicone or rubber pads, then place these on the corner of the psu and disc drive. This pushes them up so they are not touching the heatsink, especially the psu as that create the most heat. So the gap now allow extra air flow between the psu and main heatsink, before the psu would add to the heatsink and hence the cpu below it.
I'm going to try to get pads in their too, but I'm still concerned that it's a bad PSU.
