Playstation 3 Temporary Yellow Light of Death Fix

C

Chronus

New member
Hello everyone,

Recently this week my Playstation 3 yellow lighted (similar to the red ring of death for the 360), and became unusable. Due to this, and my lack of foresight in keeping proper back ups of my game saves, I was a bit upset over losing all my data since Sony's encryption scheme makes it very difficult to recover data from a PS3 hard drive without using the built-in PS3 system utilities, which require the system to be working, obviously.

Fortunately, I found this YouTube video by djwhetzel (I did not make this) explaining how to temporarily fix the system after it yellow lights on you. Basically, the solder comes loose over time on PS3 fat models due to heat (same as a 360 fat model), but, if you disassemble it and remove the thermal grease on the CPU and GPU, heat gun the motherboard to re-melt the solder, re-grease the CPU and GPU, then re-assemble, it will start again.

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for anything that may happen as you try this. Remember to unplug the PS3 and let it set a bit for any remaining electricity in it to disperse, and be very careful with heat guns as they can exceed 500 degrees celsius and start fires if you are not cautious. Do not get any thermal grease or rubbing alcohol in your eyes or mouth, either, obviously.

Long story short, I followed these 3 videos to the letter and was able to get the PS3 running again to recover my saved data and avoid redoing hundreds of hours of game play. Hopefully once PSN is up I can use the data transfer utility to transport everything over 1 to 1 to the new PS3 Slim I bought to replace this one. I will post these videos here in case anyone else encounters a similar issue and needs to fix their PS3.

Note: Doing this will void your warranty, I would only recommend doing so if your warranty is expired like mine was. Otherwise, Sony can fix the system for you. Again, BE CAREFUL.

Side Note: From what I am seeing of the heat dispersion system on the fat model PS3s, it's no wonder these things have issues after a few years.

Video 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Ic1_TY-GU

Video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr1zyAGwnuU&feature=fvwrel

Video 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHgCa3XEPic&feature=fvwrel
 
Thanks for sharing this, I'm always glad to see threads that help other people. I have some launch consoles myself and thankfully, nothings happened to them but I understand when something goes wrong (on both platforms actually) it usually needs some kind of reballing. Based on my experience, I actually believe that a system standing up has less chances of needing repairs, the 360 and PS3 motherboards seem to have a harder time warping that way versus laying down.

You mention that Sony can fix this if you don't feel like doing it yourself. But I heard that if you send back a 60 gig that they give you a newer refurb model, so I was always hesitant to do so as I love the backwards compatibility. Can you confirm that Sony will send you back your original board only repaired?
 
You're welcome Terry.

I'm honestly not sure. Given the nature of the problem, GameStop will not accept any YLOD PS3s even as a broken trade-in for refurbishment since they cannot, I quote "As a company, figure out a way to reliably fix a PS3 that has YLOD". I imagine if Sony does fix it, they are just putting in new parts, whatever it may require. On the whole, a refurbished one would be easier for them to provide. I have not heard of any working permanent fixes for the YLOD.

What I have read is they will look at it, and if they cannot fix it, will send a refurbished model.
 
Please excuse my incompetence, but you can't just remove the hard drive and put it into a different ps3?


Edit : Oh oh oh, is it that you wanted to keep your backwards compatible ps3 and didn't wanna risk losing it by sending it into sony? Er.. No I guess that doesn't make much sense either.
 
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That's a reasonable question actually, I thought about doing that myself, but after looking into it, I found one of those Sony security measures I was referring to. When you first insert a hard disk into a PS3 it will reformat the drive to the proprietary file system and encryption scheme used by the PS3, even if the drive is already in PS3 format, causing you to lose all data on it.

It's a real pain.
 
hey bud, hate to break it to you but I have actually done this before on my fat play station and it only worked for a week. Tried to do it again and unfortunately it did not work a second time. You should defiantly back up your hard rive in settings-system settings-back utility then go deactivate you ps3 network account. under playstation network account management. Which you probably can't right now because the network is down.
 
Yeah, it's only a temporary fix, I just needed it up and running long enough to back it up. Now that everything is on a USB stick I just have to wait for PSN to come back up, activate the new PS3, and transfer it all over.
 
Indeed only a temp fix as true reflowing requires surface mount equipment. For anyone that has a Fat PS3 especially a 60GB model the original thermal compound was horrible and I suggest replacing it correctly with a HQ product as a prevention to the YLOD. Once my warranty expired I was shocked when I opened my system and found the thermal compound completely dried and flaking only after a year.
 
Agreed, the thermal compound on the CPU and GPU did not look good at all, and I found the internal design to be a bit questionable from a heat dissipation standpoint. No heat sink, and it's all mashed in there together.
 
Re: Rip ps3 slim 2008-2011

We already have a thread about this.....I am going to merge and please use the search button, or just look a few threads down ;)
 
Dusting the PS3 will not help any, unfortunately. My heating vents were perfectly clear, and I made sure to dust the system off every month or two. The yellow light of death stems mainly from a design flaw in the cooling of the PS3. Same issue the 360 fat models have, pretty much. From what I understand both systems "slim" models fix these design flaws and consume less power to boot.
 
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