rest in pieces...

[DeepMix]

im not sure where should i post it without getting an infranction so i dont care im writing it here...

last night i said goodbye to my ps3, it died of ylod ( it was giving me overheating & freezing problems) since several days ago so i dissambled it to do a thermal paste change but it didnt fix it, now it doesnt even boot the console, it freezes right at the ps3 start up presentation.

i feel sorry rollcage rebels, i'd have to leave racing for a while, til a get a new ps3 dont know how much time it'll pass maybe months so i would like to left PS in charge of the team ( if he wants) luckily i had enough time to backup most of my savefiles so i didnt lose my wipeout savefile neither any of my games cause i deactived my accounts xD

yeldar knew WO was giving me problems days ago but i didnt think it was cause of a ylod oh well... my ps3 lived for about 2 years 3 months, it was alot for a 40gb model ( since it used the same hardware cooling as the 60gb) i didnt even had bluray issues.

so thats it gentlemen & ladies, it was a pleasure racing with all of you, i dont know when ill be able to get another one so next time youre racing online it can be me the one who passes you like the deathracer lol (if u have played the tokyo xtreme racer u'll understand it)

/DM

[ACE-FLO]

oh man!

feel bad for you mate. I remember when my psp died in October... nevermind. I'm sure you won't be without a PS3 for too long. I hope not, anyway... [goes to race a good will speed lap ]

[AG-wolf]

Wait wait wait... PS3 overheats too?

joking aside, that sucks. You gonna send it in for refurb or just buy a new model? The 40gb wasn't PS2 compatible was it? If not, then it might be worth it just to grab a slim...

[Rezatron]

Sorry to hear deep
I saw you on PSN last night go online and offline maybe 10 times within a span of 5 minutes... I was about to ask what the hell you were doin', I guess that was right before your PS3

[yeldar2097]

Aww no so it was a PS3 issue and not just a WO issue?

Gah that's horrid. Hope you can be back with us soon

Poor little PS3

[brainbeat]

if you wanna recover some files, music ect do this,

unplug, get a hairdryer and hold at back of ps3 for 5 mins. should heat the soldier enough to reflow the chip, mixed results from this but generally works for 20 mins or so before reylod

tough luck , I almost cried when happened to me, wish i knew that trick then

[Mad-Ice]

That sucks mate! I really hope you can sort that one out. A friend of mine had it too, some electric wizard here in our hometown could fix it for him. Good luck to you and finding someone who can fix it for you, greetz Mad-Ice

[KIGO1987]

That sucks, any pendulum lost, i well give you

[TorquedSoul]

I feel ya Deepmix, My PS3 just flat out died and gave me the YLOD last week. I have some flux on order and when it gets here I will be trying the reflow procedure myself. Cant hurt .

I'm a little concerned about all the little bits, but I think I will be able to sort it out. I have ripped plenty of laptops apart and put them back together. Mine lasted a 3 years 3 months. According to what I've been reading it has to do with the Ball Grid Array burning up the flux over time. So simply using heat without the flux will work temporarily but will leave leave the solder dry cracked. So I hope that by using the flux I will get a couple more years of use out of it before I need to reflow again.

[AG-wolf]

Ironic that this is the exact same problem the 360 had

it's just a design flaw due to the extreme temperature changes on the CPU combined with that solder ball array.
- as the temperature inside the machines rises and cools, it warps the motherboard a bit...
- the CPU gets so hot that it de-solders itself slightly
- when the motherboard warps away from the chip, and then the die temperature cools, the solder hardens quickly with cracks or loss of contact (it's brittle lead-free stuff due to that RoHS thing that all electronics manufacturers have to abide by)

The 360's major design flaw was the way they implemented the clamps to hold the heat-sink; it doesn't allow for the warping/movement of the motherboard, so it basically exacerbated the problem. They've long since switched to smaller chip dies and better cooling, and it no longer belches out heat like a furnace.

The PS3's cooling flaw is simply the fact that SO MUCH is crammed so tightly before they had access to smaller dies... kinda happens with any first-gen electronics really. They might have staved off the problem a bit if they hadn't sacrificed fan speed for sake of reducing noise. Once they dropped PS2 compatibility, they started using a smaller die CPU, and the machine ran cool enough.

Reflowing the chip might work, but you need more than a basic hair-dryer, you need something with high enough heat to melt the solder again. Your best bet would be to take it apart and expose the chip itself, then get a heat gun.

[DeepMix]

sorry to hear that TorquedSoul actually i feel kinda strange lucky but strange that i could backed everything up on my ps3, since it died slowly, a lot of people just realize their console is dead by the next day when they've been playing cool the day before...

opening the ps3 is really really easy just be carefull with all the screws it has, you can use this guide to open and fix your ps3 the guy really knows whats he is doing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U70SgRDVcBo , i know it can be fixed you just need to do the disassemble of everything then a heat gun,i havent found a heat gun on my country, it really really sucks i will have to buy a ps3 slim instead. good luck on yours mate!

[TorquedSoul]

I have a heat gun so I think I should be able to get it working. I did plenty of research ahead of time to see what could be done. One guy even suggested bending a couple brackets to help keep the chips in place.

The heat gun, cooling compound and flux cost me about $40 US. Far better than paying $150 to have it fixed ... and I will have all the stuff I need if it happens again. In a year or two.

Too bad you couldn't get a heat gun ... that seems to be the only real way to get this problem fixed. You need about 400C when using flux ... you wont get that from a hairdryer.

[wich]

You should be able to find a heat gun in any DIY store, just look for paint strippers. And be sure it can get up to the required temperature, be on the high side since you lose temp on the way from the heat gun to the chip. However be careful not to overheat the chip, use the lowest setting and the furthest distance that will do. Oh, and don't keep the gun on it for too long at a time, otherwise heat will build up inside the chip.

[TorquedSoul]

What I read is 400C (with flux) for about 15-20 secs and about 1-1.5 inches from the board.

[DJ Techno]

no infraction

your crying about a playstation three


if mine

which i just got


a 250 gb backwards compatible

if it went to fried chicken heaven....

be making a post too..

[wich]

uh... say what?

[AG-wolf]

It's okay to be upset about your Platstation 3 dying...

I just got a backward compatible model with a 250gb hard drive; if it died on me, I'd be bummed out too and probably post a thread about it

For wich; lol Mike makes perfect sense to me XD

[DJ Techno]

uh... say what?

just read the short part of words i say... don't confuse yourself!


it was about a ps3

[TorquedSoul]

Well my ps3 is working at the moment. It took me two tries. The first time I reflowed it worked long enough for me to change my avatar comment to "YLOD Defeated!" before it failed ... about 5 minutes. I just did it again and now its working and has been for about an hour ... I'm cautiously optimistic at this point.

Some notes:
When I reflowed it the first time I was overly cautious. I added a lot of flux but then when I was heating it up I didn't want to get to close to the board so I was about 1.5 inches from the board. Plus I counted off the time in my head ... which means I probably had it exposed less the 20 seconds I was shooting for. After it failed I decided to be a bit more aggressive with my next attempt as I figured it was a reflow problem as it worked for a couple minutes.

The second time I kept the heat gun closer to the about ... about an inch and used my watch to count off 25 seconds. So far so good. I'm going to stress test it now and see if it can hold up to some gaming.

[AG-wolf]

hahaha good luck, sounds like an adventure