i just replaced the thermal paste on my ps3 (which had been ylod-ing) yesterday. to let it "set" (which i thought it needed) i didnt play it till this morning, so it had at least 10 hrs of dormancy. i was playing ddrmax, and suddenly i got the dreaded YLOD again. does this mean that thermal paste replacement is just another temporary solution? (i used arctic silver 5, and i followed the directions from multiple tutorials). if it makes any difference, i have a launch 80gig
well i decided to take it further apart, and even took apart the disc drive, where i found that the track was off. so i fixed that, but i still get the dreaded YLOD.
Hairdryer trick is what got it for me. It's yet another temporary fix, but it will last about 40 playtime hours before you need to do it again. Just wrap your PS3 in a hoodie or something, and use a hairdryer to blow hot air through the vents. Keep moving it back and forth for 15 minutes. If you keep it in place, you'll melt the plastic. Oh, and eject the HDD and any discs. You don't want to melt those... If all you did was reapply the thermal paste, then you took it completely apart for nothing. You need to use a heat gun to "reset" the CPU and GPU square things back on, THEN apply the thermal paste. After the 15 minutes, blow regular air through the vents for another 15 minutes. I have an external fan that is clamped onto the back of my PS3 that does this. I'd suggest getting an external fan specifically for the PS3 when running. Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Evercool-Defender-Turbo-Cooling-Fan-Playstation/dp/B001DNGCN2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345233291&sr=8-1&keywords=ps3+fan (There are cheaper alternatives). I've had my PS3 YLOD on me 3 times now. Hairdryer trick worked every time, but temporarily. I never actually got the traditional method of taking the whole thing apart to work, even with thermal paste and remelting of the CPUs and GPUs...but I'm sure that thermal paste helped some...Hopefully, the external fan and never letting the room go above standard room temperature will prevent it from happening again. Even with the external fan and thermal paste, an 80 degree (F) room will still cause YLOD.
@insanecrazy007 yeah, ive done the hairdryer trick before, and when i was playing KH and LBP3, it worked perfectly fine without needing redoing. i was browsing teh interwebz, and read about the thermal past replacement. in the end, right now at least, its working. if i remember right, i did the paste after the ylod, then when it still failed, flipped it over and trained a hairdryer on it for 15 minutes. after i let it cool down for a few hrs, it works again, and ive been able to play ps2 ddr games for several hours total, spread out, of course. i feel the fan after each session, and it definitely seems cooler. @Loonylion i didnt check for a fan model number, but when i was looking on the web before i fixed the most recent ylod, i found out that sony made 19 and 15 blade fans. ive read the 19 is cooler, so when i popped open the ps3, i counted the blades and there were 19
I believe its limit is the USB power. If it were powered through something else, I'm sure it'd be faster, but more inconvenient to find a power source.
I made one of those DIY "Air conditioner" fans (found on youtube), and the air flow from that, using the USB, is about the same.
