I believe my dead PS3 saga is now over, and it was... a success! I've decided to type out all I did to hopefully cut down on time spent searching around for future PS3 mourners. I did a lot of research and compared several methods and videos and opinions to make the choices I made, so here's what I've got:
After I did that hair dryer/towel trick, it died again about 7 hours into the backup. So if all you need is to get the disc out and you don't care about the PS3 long-term, this will do it.
But with this death, I wasn't getting the YLOD anymore... it would stay on for maybe 5-10 mins before shutting down, which I deduced was an overheating problem. So I took it apart, redid the paste with the pea method, and slapped it back together. And it was still no good. The problem this time was back to the YLOD!
I wasn't giving up yet! I knew I'd have to get a new PS3 soon either way, but I really wanted to make sure I was all backed up to the cloud and wanted to do a system backup, as well as MAYBE get it stable enough to sell to someone less risk averse than I (with a full disclosure on the system's history of course). So I set out to do a reflow following
this guide on instructables. I didn't want to spend $40 on a heatgun, nor did I want to spend $150 on a reball, NOR did I want to spend $125 for Sony to send me a refurbbed unit that likely wouldn't last me a year. So the oven method (which this guy prefers to the heatgun method anyway) would have to do.
I followed every step, including the full 8-hour pre-bake, the sticky tack and foil, the flux, screw stands, oven reflow, etc. Then I put the thermal pads (which I'd installed a year prior when the system was getting loud during TLOU sessions) back on and some MX-2 thermal paste, but this time I did the spread method, rather than the pea method. And not only is my PS3 back to life, but it's quieter than ever! Since a few years ago, the fans would spin up really loud really quick, even after I opened it up a while back to clean out about a pound of dust and install those thermal pads. I chalked it up to old age, old components and just hoped it wouldn't die.
But now after the reflow, the fans don't spin up nearly as high anymore. In fact, just sitting on the XMB or playing a low-intensity PSN game, it's almost totally silent. When I put in a more demanding game the fans might spin up to a fraction of the noise they did before the reflow--to a soft hum most of the time. The thing is as good as new now, and it's awesome. I'm considering taking my chances and not selling it or replacing it just yet. It just hasn't looked/sounded this good in years. I know reflows are only supposed to be good for a few months, but the results so far have been very optimistic. And I'd love to keep that PS2 capability if I can help it. So we'll see, but my plan before was to get a new slim during a holiday sale this year. Might still do it, but now I don't know!
A few things that went differently for me from the guide:
1. The prebake: He says to heat the oven to 150, but mine wouldn't go below 170. The little oven thermometer I bought for this reflow was reading something closer to 185-190. Did it that way anyway, with no insulation, and it was fine.
2. The actual oven reflow: He says to set the the oven to 500, but stop it once the oven reaches around 465 (remember, he first says to preheat, but then updates it to say to put the board in cold and allow it heat with the oven). The little thermometer only read 415 by the time my 500 preheat beeper went off. I panicked, not knowing which gauge to trust. But I ended up believing the thermometer I bought, and cranked the preheat temp up to 650, and waited until the little thermometer read 465 before stopping. That turned out to be the right move.
3. After the reflow, I noticed some weird syrup-colored "stains" or something on the motherboard. Perfectly fine, nothing to worry about there.
4. I couldn't get all the tack off the components. I got most of it, and cleaned as best I could, but it's ok if some is still on it. The tack is an excellent electrical and heat insulator, so it's not hurting anything.
5. Before the reflow, don't skimp on the flux. Don't hose it down or anything either, but keep dropping drops of it on (under) the chips until you're certain they're flushed with it. I had a few streams of it running down the board from the chips by the end. Sometimes I couldn't be sure if the drops were going under and out of the chips running along the sides, around the chips and streaming down, so I kept adding drops to be sure. Seemed to work out.
6. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on those screws/nuts, so I found a kit on amazon that had the right width, but were too short, and I fashioned them together by joining two of the same screws together with a nut. Sometimes it was hard to get them to stay, but I eventually worked it out.
Here's the stuff I bought:
Screw Kit
Sticky Tack
Thermometer
Flux
Thermal Paste
And for reference: my wife's
hair dryer
And the
thermal pads I had installed previously... not required, but wouldn't hurt.
I also used
this to clean and prep the heatsink and chips before pasting. I had them lying around from the kit I bought when I repasted my 360. GooGone will work just as well.
Hope that helps!
