PS3 Yellow light of death yesterday - Fixed Today!

R5GTT

R5GTT

R5GTT

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19 Sep 2005
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Last night I started to watch a film when 20 minutes in the screen went blank, ps3 beeped and then switched off.
Tried to turn it on and it fired up for about 3 seconds before showing the yellow light briefly and then switching itself off.

This is a 60GB that I bought on launch day for around £550 with a couple of games :eek:


Anyway watched some videos on youtube last night by a guy who goes by the name of "gilksy"

Got home from work today and stripped the ps3 down, re flowed the areas mentioned in the guide with a
300 degrees heat gun (350 degrees is recommended but I just held it slightly closer instead)
Defluffed it all then spread some artic silver on the main chips and re assembled.

To my joy the PS3 lives again :) Sony wanted £131 for what is essentially a reflowed refurbed console and the repair shop wanted £70.
All it cost me in the end was just under 2 hours of my time (which included 30 mins cooldown of the board on both sides.)

More info can be found in gilksy's thread here: http://playstationlifestyle.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2376



Some pics of the stripped PS3 (excuse the paste table and cloth :p )

P1020703.jpg


P1020705.jpg


P1020706.jpg


P1020707.jpg
 
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Yh his is a good guide. My 40GB broke, but I couldn't be bothered to go through all the effort of opening it up (aswell as needing to buy a heat gun), thinking that it would probably break again before too long. Like most of the refurb models do.

So I just bought a slim. :p
 
Originally I was going to go down the sales of goods act route to get the retailer to pay for the repair or give me a new console. I decided against it because of needing an engineers report which would have cost me and was a risk if I didn't succeed in getting them to pay.

As for the fix I really wasn't sure whether it would work mainly because of using a 300 degree heatgun instead if the 350. B&Q do one that will do 350 degrees for about £23 but also some a little cheaper.

Tools wise you'll need

"normal" sized phillips screwdriver
Small phillips screwdriver
T8 Torx screwdriver or bit (for removing the top logo cover)
Thermal compound
compound cleaner or Isopropanol. I tend to always use Isopropanol these days because it evaporates quicker.
Heatgun with ideally 350degrees on a low fan setting. (too high a fan speed and you can shift components)
The needle nose pliers were just for any dropped screws :p
Small brush/compressed air is handy for getting rid of the fluff


Take your time stripping it purely because of the ribbon cables you will have to remove but then when you come to put it back together it doesn't seem to take long at all and I was quite suprised at just how easy this was to do. Just make sure you don't over do the heat. You may think it's not doing much so don't be tempted to do it for longer or hold the nozzle too close as you will cause a lot more damage.

I kept all the screws with the correct parts on the table but a real handy website showing the process and also the screw size/locations can be found here :http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/PlayStation-3-Teardown/1260/1


I've also reflowed a GTX 280 in the kitchen oven in the past although someone wasn't happy about the kitchen smelling of flux after! :p
 
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I did the same but it did not work for me, I found out my system most likely has a borked temp sensor preventing the PS3 from booting as it senses hardware failure straight away.

I found it quite easy to disassemble, all normal screws inside the PS3, just very fragile flatcables and connectors.
 
Areas highlighted here, remove any thermal material and near by pads.
make sure the board is nice and flat and after heating one side leave it to cool for 15 mins.


Who knows how long the fix will last, but it's worth a try and easier than going down the reballing route!

PS3_motherboard_7.jpg


PS3_motherboard_8.jpg
 
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