Sizzle's Guide to YLOD

Feel free to sticky this : Eagle Eye has followed my instructions and his PS3 now works fine.

Ok, equipment : You need

thermal paste (Cheap is fine if you're going to fix the ps3, copy the saves and sell it.....use expensive if you want to keep it and use it)
small flat head screwdriver (-) and a medium sized phillips (+)
Hairdryer
Heatgun capable of reaching 200 degrees celcius (wherever you would go to buy painting and decorating tools will sell them)
an old debit/credit card.
Tim Clean (if you can get it - if not, you need isopropyl alcohol. Go to any computer shop and ask for "Thermal paste remover" you'll probably need 10ml but they come in 250ml bottles.



Now, here's the process :
Use the hairdryer on your warranty sticker (That way you can claim "It's never been opened"). Heat for about 60 seconds and very slowly use a craft knife (a sharp, long bladed knife) to peel the sticker away. The hairdryer is heating the glue so the "VOID" logo is not displayed. If you see the glue sticking to the machine, heat the zone that you are peeling and do it 1cm at a time.

Now that this is removed, put it somewhere safe. (If it went wrong and didnt get hot enough or whatever, keep it anyway)

put the hairdryer away - it cannot get hot enough to be any help from here on.

So, remove rubber bung behind the warranty sticker, use small flat head screwdriver to remove the torx10 screw.

slide lid off, undo all screws in top of PS3, put somewhere safe. I got one of those boxes with seperators to put all the stuff in.
Undo almost every screw in the console. DO NOT PULL THE RIBBON CABLES! Unclip them.
DO NOT unscrew the fan. You should end up with the fan unit, motherboard and a silver sheet of metal on top.

there are two clamps on there with black screws. once removed, bend the clamps slightly (just 40 degrees) and let them return so they are elevated in a lazy V shape.

Remove metal sheet and then you have to GENTALLY prize the motherboard from the fan chassis (Make sure you remove the power to the fan as they'r eplugged together.

now that you're down to just the motherboard, we can start work. (Make sure the battery is removed and kept somewhere safe)

Use the tim clean/thermal paste remover to get all the old paste off the two chips. Use a kitchen tissue (those absorbant ones) or a paper towel. once it's shiney clean, you should be able to see one says RSX and should be the same colour all over.

get a small spirit level and rest the motherboard on a surface that can withstand 350 degrees of heat (usually a cooker or barbaque) and make sure the board is level **Really important** check with spirit level and you are resting the spirit level on the RSX Square and the other square.

Once level - use some aluminium foil to protect the rest of the board leaving those two squares exposed.

check it's still level.

fire up the heat gun pointing to the sky, let it get warm. You want it around 350 degrees to do the job quickly but lower heats (down to 200) work, just take longer.

Use the heat gun to "paint" each chip holding it about an inch or two from the chips. go from one corner, sideways, to the next corner, then down, then across, then back up. Should take about 5 seconds to do the chip.

then do the same on the other silver chip. then go back and redo this process for about 2 minutes (5 secs per chip, back and forth, 12 times each alternating). The chip itself needs to get to 200 degrees to melt the solder underneath the chips so that they liquify and then when you finish, they reform.

Do NOT move the board in any way shape or form during this process. If the solder slips, you'll never get it to work.

allow to cool for 30 minutes.

Put a blob of thermal paste on the chips after the 30 minutes (about the size of a pea) and smear it using an old debit/credit card so that it covers the entire chip. Try not to get any on the board but it's not the end of the world if you do.

Then Reassemble (DONT FORGET TO PLUG THE FAN IN + RECONNECT THE BATTERY! I always forget), cross your fingers and power on.

You should get a green light, plug a USB stick in and copy your saved data straight away.

If you still get a yellow light followed by red flashing, it hasn't worked.
Either try again or put it on ebay stating "faulty" and get about $50 for it.

Any questions? ask me BEFORE starting!!! Also, for disassembly of a ps3, youtube it. Reassembly, youtube it.

Awesome guide thanks for your help

sizzlephizzle wrote:

Use the hairdryer on your warranty sticker (That way you can claim "It's never been opened").

If it's still under warranty why not send it back and if the warranty has run out why bother with the warranty sticker.

Happy Killings.....

inover wrote:

sizzlephizzle wrote:

Use the hairdryer on your warranty sticker (That way you can claim "It's never been opened").

If it's still under warranty why not send it back and if the warranty has run out why bother with the warranty sticker.

Yes, if it's under warranty send it back...wait a month and lose all your save games, photo albums, let them find your illegal downloaded movies snd music etc.....

Or fix it

If you fail to fix it, the warranty sticker means someone on ebay will pay more for it as they believe it's not been tampered with and another part time ps3 fixer will buy it. That sticker is worth around $10 on a faulty PS3.

If you fix your YLOD, it's not going to last forever....so fix it, replace warranty sticker and the console is then sell it fast. It's worth an extra $20 for the sticker being in tact.

bump - someone sticky this.

If ye can't need bothered to read above search for ylod. Repair on YouTube there's about 50 billion of them but the ones you need are the ones with heat gun and CPU sink paste