RIP Playstation 3: December 2006 – January 2011

During a brief play session, only 30 minutes into LittleBigPlanet 2 my Playstation 3 abruptly shut down mid-jump. I was confused, my kids who were watching were confused, Sackboy was confused and apparently so was my TV which innocently reported there being “NO SIGNAL”. I walked over to the system, which was now displaying a blinking red light.

After a couple attempts to restart it, I discovered the light pattern not to be just a flashing red light, but one short pulse of a yellow light followed by a continuous red flash. This is commonly known as the Yellow Light of Death, or the PS3′s equivalent to the Xbox 360′s Red Ring of Death. According to the massive quantity of YouTube videos, message board posts and craigslist ads for local repair, this is a problem caused by excessive heat and the CPU/GPU’s connections to the motherboard.

I asked my wife to investigate solutions to the problem as I was too pissed off to continue down that path on the first night. She helpfully identified a shop in Salt Lake City, Utah who would repair the issue for $80. The site, while probably totally legitimate and authoritative, looked like an unskilled high schooler’s first stab at web design. I told her I was going to just pay the higher price and go with Sony. She rebutted with the following: “From what I’ve read there’s almost no chance they’ll send you back the same system and they don’t guarantee recovery of the data off of your hard drive. These guys do both for half the price.”

She had logic and anecdotal data on her side, but I still didn’t wholeheartedly agree. While I wanted to go the “official route”,  I was concerned about losing backwards compatibility and in getting someone else’s refurbished machine. The Sony repair costs $160, so I figured the best path would be to wait out the next great discount on the hardware and pick up a new machine for around $200. Still, I had to do something about this otherwise dead machine sitting beside my TV. After a few hours of mulling it over while I played through the abysmal Dead Space: Ignition on my last working current-gen console, I decided to attempt a self-repair.

The cost was pretty low: $40 for a heat gun, $4 for a Torx size 10 screwdriver (for one lousy screw, by the way) and $3 for single use amount of Arctic Silver thermal paste. After tax, that’s $52, roughly. I felt like I was up by $28 and I’d have a working PS3 by the end of the day. Oh how high my hopes were yesterday.

Following the excellent combination of a PDF guide and videos by gilksy, I disassembled my PS3 down to its bare motherboard. The guide instructs to clean all of the dust and old thermal paste from the heat sink/fan assembly which, despite my frequent compressed air cleanings, was filthy.

The fun part was heating the CPU/GPU and memory to 650 degrees in an effort to “reflow” the connections. I’d never heard of the term before, but I have since learned this is pretty common. Once the board was cooked and cooled on both sides, I applied new thermal paste and reassembled the beast in record time.

Fingers crossed.

[YELLOW-RED-RED-RED-RED-RED-RED-RED-RED...]

So, not fixed.

I’m still on the fence about giving it one more go. Maybe I didn’t apply enough heat during my reflow of the components. Also of major concern is my (rented) copy of LBP2, which is still lodged in the PS3′s Blu Ray drive, with no way to force the drive to kick it out manually. I may just have to disassemble the drive in order to return the disc and save myself from buying an unwanted and unplayable PS3 game. No matter the eventual outcome, I think this is the end of my first PS3.

We’ve had some great times together. All of the fantastic PSN exclusives, half un-tucked adventuring, smoke breaks between chapter installs, digital storage of now-lost PS2 memory cards, hours of high-definition video entertainment and the promise of even more excitement and thrills to come.

I’m sure I will have stopped resisting the urge to buy a new console by the time Killzone 3 releases. I’ll try to make my purchase on the sly, but there’s no way my wife will miss such a glaring MAT (Massive Account Transfer).

The only question that remains is what to do with the corpse. Should I toss it into the nearest rubbish bin or post it up on eBay for spare parts? Either way, I’m going to miss that black obelisk of gaming goodness, fingerprints and all.

[Update: I've received responses from gilksy where he's directed me to a secondary procedure called refluxing. It involves applying a liquid (no clean flux) to the critical motherboard components followed by a higher temperature heat treatment. I'm going to try this tonight and will post one final update with the results. Thanks gilksy for your quick and helpful reply! If this works, I can guarantee a donation will be made.]