Kiaw's neighbor here, we know her as halina in real world. Her contribution is so big that her playstation repair shop always crowded, until she passed away because of breast cancer. Her contribution never be forgotten, rest in peace Halina
@@ripfelix3020 perhaps, the account also handled by her husband. I don't know ¯\_༼ •́ ͜ʖ •̀ ༽_/¯ Currently I lost contact with him since their family move to jakarta.
@@ripfelix3020 I love tinkering low-level stuff like this, coincidentally youtube just recommended your video to me :) By the way, I have a story to tell about the era of PS3 at my hometown until the bubble bursts
@@KangJangkrik hey I checked out your channel and loved your playlists! why am I not surprised that a low-level tinkerer is an anime enjoyer? similar minds think alike huh
As a retired electronic engineer, I found your discourse on the PS3 YLOD and your conclusions/explanations fascinating and extremely informative. I have two PS3 first generation consoles with the RSX CXD2971 that have been languishing in ESD protective bags in my attic. I've kept them for exactly the reasons you mentioned-they are 100% reverse compatible for the PS2 AND PS1 consoles, and that's why I didn't junk them when they failed. Funny thing, though-my original PS1 console, and my two later PS2 consoles (not to mention my Mattel Intellivision) are still working perfectly after all these years. You did a fantastic job with this video, and it was a pleasure for me to view it. Thank you!
@Mr Guru People should move on. But that is not enough. Avoid anything that you have no future place to move on to. And o boy that is hard. Even Linux have no dam hope. But it would be nice to force Windows to go away and get something just something that promotes keeping stuff working for decades without resorting to emulations. But the undertaking to make software and hardware that try and keep stuff portable is just... Maddening. But software being tied to hardware that have no path going forward is just wrong. PS2 and slim PS3 is not going to work forever. Like no joke pirates are probably going to look like heroes in the future as they are the only ones working on preserving anything right after launch of something. If console makers and the like had there way we all had only had Stadia access subscriptions. And no say in keeping anything and stuff just vanishing forever.
@Mr Guru but how do you make a SOC repairable? There is no way to maintain this on the level of tech that we have right now. Maybe more access to diagnostics tools is necessary, but, requesting that this kind of issue to be easily fixable is more than a dream, it's impossible.
@Mr Guru New common CPUs are not generally available - unless they're the latest generation or two. And you need CPUs from the same generation as your motherboard, or 1 ahead.
@@coltenosborne9156 The info was there, but not in the way that it is presented and analysed in this video. I myself didn't need much convincing, however people who have only heard of the nectokin 'fix" can benefit from the explanations.
I just wanted to say thank you for this video. The human brains thirst for logic and its incredible ability to problem solve still leaves me in awe. What a species we've become.
Most of those human brains are more likely to be found filming themselves putting their console in an oven or going for a run with an N95 strapped to their face. We don't thirst for logic, we force ourselves to use it because it's the only way to solve problems. At least that's how I'd say it. Could be wrong, I'm not a biologist. I agree, the video is good, especially with a keyboard handy to skip the unnecessary asides. He does shine when sticking to the point.
You just speedrunned the ps3 ylod. You're a frickin master. No seriously, I'm impressed. Your obsession with this thing resulted in a long and very detailed video. I love it. If there was an award for such a work, you deserved it, as well as the community that helped you. I just replugged my old ps3 after seeing your video, I installed a cfw, and ran some games. It's greatful to see that it still works well after hearing what you're saying. You deserve better than only 400 subscribers.
Back in 2011 i started the reballing business. For me having a bga chip removed, reballed down to 0.5mm balls and make the laptop boot again, was already the big accomplishment. I did not have the time and will to investigate further. After a few years i was shocked to discover that most of the reworked laptops were already dead in the first year and the others soon to come. So making the reballing as advicable as a reflow. The truth was that most clients, like you stated, because of being charged high, did not consider about returning again and simply got rid of the notebook. Later, i tried to understand what was going on. I even reballed and removed the chips just to see the soldering. In 90% of cases it was perfect. So sth else was to blame. Digging around i learned about the bump and substrate thing, and since then went only for revised chips. This video, was like a dejavu of my journey. Thank you for this.
Thats it, the whole story and the true cause of the YLOD. I cant listen to people anymore blaming the nec tokins, everyone who has worked and tried this tantalum fix knows that almost always the issue lies beneath the RSX. I have also got obsessed and dunno why i have over 20 of them i want to try the Frankenstein mod but not until i practice on scrap not BC boards. Thank you for all your hard work
About nec tokins when i heard about it for the first time i was like what kind of deamons are they trying to hunt?! It realy looked like they had found a witch that had to be burned lol It was not good to be a nec tokin at this moment, the darkest hour of these little components! It's still painfull today to see the determination against it, just based on wrong interpretations and not enough research and understanding. Sorry for my english, not my native language, i work on it everyday to improve myself :)
don't get too ahead of yourself. even in the video, RIP Felix only says this is MAYBE a cause. a POSSIBLE explanation. he has no way of actually checking his hypothesis to be true and assumes a lot of stuff, all of which he clearly outlines in the video. there's no way to say that the root cause of the problem has been found!
@@cheater00 GPU probably was the problem. The Xbox 360 had defective GPUs around the same time too due to defective underfill used by TSMC. It’s incredibly likely this same underfill was used on the PS3 GPU (RSX, is it called? I don’t know much about the PS3).
Check out Mystic's documentary on the console war between PS3 and Xbox 360. It's one of the best documentaries I have ever seen on TH-cam. He has done several other good documentaries like the PSP and the PS Vita, but the console war one is by far the best.
@@cardsharpHS Lol, a documentary doesn't have to be a multi-million dollar project to be worth showing. It's excellent content and very similar to many amateur documentaries already showing on TV and Netflix. If you spent just a few minutes browsing you'd see them. Calm down, bruh.
My wife picked up a functioning launch PS3 a few months ago. I cleaned it and was happy to find it booted. I put it aside till I could figure out more about keeping it functional. I'd read most of the info you debunked. I'm super happy you made this video and helped save another PS3 from a flawed mod. Your breakdown is top notch. I looking forward to more of your content.
Don't listen to him, really, i fixed a lot of these, most people in the repair community cheap out putting just the same amount of capacitance than a tokin and no ceramic capacitor, i have a ps3 yloaded 6 years ago that i fixed with more capacitance and a ceramic cap and it's running every day with no problem. Boy, the dude in the video still trusts the datasheet, i trust the measure i did with the removed caps from failed ps3s and they all had at most a third of the capacitance advertised under the advertised temperature, they all were very burned inside compared with brand new tokins. And most people on the internet were using just about the same capacitance as a tokin but with worst tantalum capacitors and no ceramic capacitors backing up high freq, they they did that study expecting improvement with a wrong fix
@@Myrmeleos burned, tarnished, blacked, the new ones are not burned. Don't trust me, go search the tutorials people do in these ps3's and tell me how many put the same amount of capacitance in inferior quality tantalum caps with no ceramics, then report it failing again. I usually put more capacitance, ceramics and a low esr electrolytic cap just to be sure and it just never ever ylod again. No wonder if you do the same factory mistake worse it will fail even sooner.
@@fss1704 if you genuinely watched this entire masterclass of a video, and left still thinking that it’s crappy capacitors that still cause YLOD then something is genuinely wrong with you. Seriously.
@@DatGuyWithDaGlasses Open up a new tokin, then open up a faulty tokin, and tell me the difference. 98% of tutorials are SHIT, they try to put the same amount of capacitance that failed with worst ESR capacitors and expect their fix to work. Heck nevermind not having ceramic capacitors.
Fabulous documentary. My only comment as an EE is that we most certainly do not all learn CAD, especially not thermal or mechanical stress CAD. That would likely be in a master's program for a microelectronics engineer, if anything. Edit: I cannot stress enough how much I love the balance between technicals and storytelling. For me, it's the perfect ratio. I'll be subscribing and hoping you continue. CHEERS!
I appreciate your knowledge and obsession with the research and electrical engineering information that you've displayed with this video. Im currently fixing, recapping and modding classic game systems. The furthest generation I found i can repair and mod is PS2. I want to get better, I want to hold that title of Electrical Engineer. I want to be able to contribute to the community. I want to be able to perform highly skilled repairs such as the 40mm RSX Frankenstein Phat PS3. I apologize for this rant. You've given me an obsession to pursue and I've found a new drive for my work. Thank you RIP Felix.
Wow, THX so much. Very generous of you! I'm glad my obcession helped light a passion in you too. Electrical Enginnering huh!? Cool! I think I'd probably major in it if I went back, although I'm mor interested in it as it applies to my hobbies. I found it facinating to learn and understand why and how the console fails. That's what kept me interested in digging and learning the technical stuff. There's something rewarding about "discovering" a piece of information that explains a long time mystery. I think those moments are were I find the most enjoyment.
This video is amazing man. I tried reballing an emmc once and ended up rage quitting lol. Your persistance with learning the root cause and solution to the YLOD issue is inspiring. Now I feel like working on my reball skill and work my way up from little switch emmcs to full blown BGA rework and making myself a Franky Ps3. Kudus man, very well done
The YLOD of my original PS3 was the first step on the fork in the road that took me down the path that led me to becoming a jedi level repair tech. Still have it, and it works flawlessly - I don't use it because it's big and noisy and I have a slim, but it was an adventure to fix, reflow done in a gas cooking oven lol. It looks quite cool now, bunch of mods to the cooling etc
I'm more into emulation over having to have original hardware, however I do always enjoy when original hardware is revived/preserved in working order. Thank you for putting this presentation together.
Iv had every Playstation from launch and they all still work to this day( well besides my ps2 that one was ALWAYS ON for one reasons or another but iv vever had a problem with my ps3 ever) The only problem iv ever had was with ps4 and it was the USB slot went dead and I had to send it to get replaced and they gave me free ps plus time, which is normal because I built my pc and have a few items be doa when they arrive
Crazy how much passion makes or breaks a TH-cam video. I wouldn't have thought I would be siting here watching a documentary on the PS3 Yellow Light of Death (which I experienced when I was a wee lad of 11-12 years back in the late 2000s), but here I am, and this video is thoroughly entertaining. If a documentary is not made correctly, or clearly does not have any heart put into it, it's boring, but this certainly was not. I appreciated all the editing and pacing and scripting that went into this. Excellent job, RIP Felix!
This brings back a lot of memories of 2011. I had an electronics repair business at the time. I repaired a lot of TVs and iphone 4s with proven techniques, and made them even better with higher quality parts when I could. However, when I found out about the 'reball' repairs, and the failing chips, I got into that as well. I purchased some reflow and infrared reballing stations, and started on the process. The Xbox 360 was fairly easy to reball, and I did a number of them before I realized that it was not a permanent solution. I faced an overwhelming sense of guilt over ripping off people who thought this 'fix' was the real thing, when I had no confidence at all that this solution would last. I closed the business after a while, but I always wanted to know the real details of why these errors happened, and tonight by finishing your video I feel like I finally have the answer after all these years. It's simply a matter of major companies competing in the market on speed and low cost, and taking risks on releasing hardware without proper testing. I still have a ylod CECHA, and I will NOT be doing the TOKIN replacement. I'll be looking at a 40nm chip replacement for it if I can find a shop willing to take that on. Thanks for all your passion and work, I understand the mindset and need to know when it comes to repair as well as the drive you have to get to the core of the mystery.
The price definitely warrants that kind of reaction, but let's not forget E3 was also very different at the time, way more investor and press-oriented rather than the consumer-focused events we have nowadays
Also love to point out 4:07 if you don't back it up, its gone forever, wrong, the hard drive should still be intact and could be transferred to another working ps3. Done so thrice for my ps3 and 2 relatives, only thing screwy is to go back in settings and set current ps3 as primary, maybe login again first.
@@ingressman1992I agree however in these cases you had to send the PS3 to Sony and receive a refurbished model. You couldn't keep hold of your hard drive when sending to Sony, so unless you had a way to back that drive up and move the data to your new drive, you lost your data. I'm unsure about this part but a lot of console manufacturers lock out access to the drive so in most cases people were screwed
@curtisss simply swap a new hard drive into it and send it off or if you upgraded the drive to a bigger internal drive, reinstall the original. It's no secret that the hard drive swap/ removal does not violate the warranty seal and can be fiddled with by the user, anywho, the ps3 is far past production and far past warranties, you probably won't be honored and repaired past replacing universally available and still in use parts for future consoles sadly. Actually would be cheaper to buy a used ps3 and hard drive swap than sending a broken ps3 to Sony for repairs.
This actually sheds some light on some issues I've had: I bought an HP gaming laptop around 2006. The GPU failed on it and HP was sued in a class action lawsuit because so many failed. After the whole ordeal, I swore I would never own another HP laptop again. Then my OG Xbox got the RROD when I was stationed in Germany (I actually never saw those Marines shooting up the Xboxes before now, hah), Microsoft wouldn't honor my US warranty because I was out of the states. I swore I would never own another Xbox. I bought an OG PS3 Phat, that lasted less than a year before it died, but Sony eventually warrantied my phat, and sent me another identical one (which still works). I didn't realize these could all be related issues. On a side note, I also swore off Samsung phones, I had a Galaxy S2 that died within a year, but Samsung wouldn't warranty it because... I was stationed out of the states again. Same stupid warranty problem like Microsoft. To this day I still wont buy an Xbox or Samsung phone for not honoring a warranty in the past.
But weren't they right not to "honor" the warranty? I bought an LG from out of my home country and I knew that warranty wouldn't cover it when I left because it said so on the paper. Also the small warranty paper isn't like terms and conditions, it is a really quick read.
The amount of work behind this video is absolutely insane... This is mindblowing, you deserve A LOT of praise! I have a 65nm PS3 that i have not touched in the last 10 years, it makes me want to check its revision, i had no idea there were 2... For BC owners, this work you did is priceless. Thanks a lot for them! Edit: I stand corrected, the 40gb model I have has a 90nm rsx. It does have a 65nm cpu, but its rsx is not 65nm, so a potential timebomb... Sigh! It works fine though, but it was barely used by its previous owner, and even less by me.
A repaste and clean with some new high-quality thermal pads such as the thermal right pads is enough to keep it working. The A0X is the most sought after PS3 as it has full backward compatibility, not hybrid bc like the later models.
@@nexxusty if you are going to do that you need to make a mask to protect the surface mount caps on the substrate u advise not to use galium instead get pm 780
@@nexxusty although you need to hope you can keep the chip and the underfill under 70C to prevent the design error from being an issue, might need to watercool the ps3 lol
So glad a senior member of the PS3 modding community has made this video dispelling all sorts of stuff. This is such a well documented, researched, and edited video. I really hope all these fake fixes stop being done once and for all. And this should apply to ALL electronics. We should be researching and diagnosing before attempting any repairs! That's repairing 101!!!
This video is the best PS3 video I have seen yet on this topic. The PS3 is my favorite console. I have the launch models, Slim and a Super Slim. The 20GB CECH-B01 is actually my favorite model, no WIFI I use an Ethernet cable anyways. I have CECHA-01 also less components more airflow. Speaking of airflow very informative section on airflow through the PS3. I never cut holes in the PS3 case specifically on the bottom, so the chips get more air. The air HAS to pass through the PSU. As stated, the holes in the case remove the PS3 intended vacuum of air into the console. The PSU is a HUGE HEAT GENERATOR by removing the air through the PSU only causes more heat to remain inside the console. 17:20 I have held a COK-001 (the board in the CECHA/B-01 console) up to a light source the amount of I called them holes, now I know the real name thermal vias is insane. Sony really wanted to cool this board. 22 hours a week, I am lucky to play 22 hours a month anymore unfortunately. 28:48 I bought a Behar Bros HDMI device for my Dreamcast, and the Behar Bros are releasing on for the OG XBOX soon. 31:19 I watched the XBOX documentary that was a very enjoyable video series (5 Parts). I got the Red Ringed on my 360, too late for any of the extended warranties Microsoft offered. Bought a Slim 360 did the preventative maintenance thermal pads new paste still going strong. 33:00 I did what Microsoft (or any company for that matter) wants you to do buy another one. Throw out the broke one buy $$$ a NEW ONE. The launch PS3 consoles the GPU only has 2 heat pipes while the CPU has three heat pipes on the heatsink, making it seen just by looking that the GPU does not need as much cooling. Sony redesigned the PS3 Slim the heat pipes were eliminated. Your timeline shows what chips were produced in what year never saw that before. 42:57 the 28 nm GPU is in the Super Slim that has a heat pipe, and it sets right on the die with thermal paste for heat transfer. In my experience I do what I can to prevent YLOD by keeping temps lower in the console. YLOD cannot be fixed, I mean fixed from the factory. The console weather reball, cap replacement, whatever motherboard failures will occur again. The console will never be fixed like it was out of the box. That is just my opinion though. Enter the Frankenstein PS3 never heard of before this video. 1:22:00 All of my PS3 launch consoles are working, I try my best to prevent the YLOD. Have I been YLOD. YES, I have after that I have been doing research for near 10 years, I found what works for me. I do not repair, reball, Frankenstein consoles. I bought 3 CECHA-01 dead (or were they) just to practice the de-lid of the IHS before I felt comfortable enough to do myself. Once again excellent video best info I have seen in one format. Love the Star Wars references XBOX R2-D2, Vader 20GB all black PS3, PS5 Stormtroopers.
I got an original Backwards compatible PS3 back in late 2010. I'll never forget the countless hours I spent playing Little Big Planet. Just as I was about to finish the game, I got the YLOD. Being as ADHD as I was back then, I couldn't mentally take the time to read the plethora of forum posts about YLODs. Believe me, I tried. Even being an electronics and DIY Repair nerd myself, I never figured out what happened. I never knew, until now. I am honestly glad I didn't try to fix it. I would have suffered false hope trying to repair my console. I guess +1 point for ADHD in this case. Sadly, I don't have the console anymore, when my simple attempts to fix it didn't give me any results, I had moved on. I forgot about it, and probably left it at someone's house when I moved out. Now that I am older, and wiser, this video was something I greatly needed. I needed that closure. Thank you for this, so much. Nothing upsets me more than misinformation, and I narrowly missed becoming a victim of it with something I loved. Take my upvote, and subscription. You've earned it.
I guess they were intentionallly made to die Quick by Sony, for extra revenew. It never suppose to last and both x-box and PlayStation couldn't care less. I guess many laptop users never even heard about both "circle of Death" and "Yellow Light Of Death"
I can’t believe I watched the whole video. But I can now say it was worth every second. The amount of dedication and enthusiasm the modding community puts into these kind of projects gives me hope that older generation consoles will even be relevant in the distant future. Watching this made me appreciate my Silver PS3 Slim even more and I will take greater care of my retro consoles now. Thank you for this interesting and informative journey.
I have an unopened CECH-A01 sitting right behind me while watching this. I've got all the means to determine what's probably actually wrong with all your work and hopefully someone has time to at-least bring this one back some day soon. Thanks for everything you've done; some people are going to be genuinely grateful if not now, for sure in the future, possibly even after we're all gone. Your obsession has left a genuine footprint in gaming history I don't think anyone can ever remove.
I'm from Chile. First PS3s that arrived here were the 80GB soft-BC ones in 2007. I happened to bought a Japanese CECHA01 from a kid who actually traveled there to grab one. I felt the luckiest guy ever. But it lasted 2 years working fine until RSX chip died. Some time later I just threw it away, because I couldn't find a qualified repair service for it. This was 2 years ago, and now that I saw this video I couldn't be more sad and nostalgic about it, but also inspired to anyhow get another one and try to Frankenstein it. Thank you for that, I truly appreciate your hard work.
I also threw away one of my cecha’s out of pure anger. Fortunately i still have one cecha left but i am too afraid of using it. Maybe i will frankenstein it when i have hundreds of dollars to burn, or just use two seperate consoles.
This is a FANTASTIC video. I've been repairing electronics for close to 10 years now, I do a lot of microsoldering and much of the work does involve performing SMD work. However, in my time doing this, I haven't worked on very many PS3s. I have done BGA rework, but I've never tackled a repair on a BGA where I thought "reball" was the answer to the problem. The _only_ time I reball a BGA is if I've royally screwed up while trying to solder on a replacement, or if the new replacement (or functional, used replacement) requires reballing to be solderable. The way I look at it, if I suspect the failure may be caused by a BGA flip chip, odds are the chip itself is the failure (or internal board traces), and NOT the BGA. There are SOME exceptions to this, but even in these exceptions, it's a failure involving traces _within the board_ rather than the BGA or the chip itself. Going back to "reflow" magically fixing a BGA, you addressed this perfectly in this video. People talk about "reflowing" their failing electronics in their kitchen oven, and there's just no way. There's no way you're getting a GPU board, a PS3 motherboard, or ANY of these electronics hot enough to effectively reflow ANYTHING if you shove them in an oven. The fact these electronics worked after being baked like a pizza just further proves it's NOT something wrong with the solder, it's something wrong WITH THE CHIP, or with the board! These things dissipate SO MUCH HEAT that you require very targeted, very intense heat, just to get solder to wet in the first place. If a kitchen oven set to 380F is all you needed, then electronics manufacturers wouldn't be using reflow ovens that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to assemble their electronics! I always thought it was absolutely ridiculous that people foolishly believed this was somehow "reflowing" solder. I have always been of the belief the issue with failing BGA flip chips lies in the bumps and/or interposer bonding wires. Heat would naturally cause these components within the package to experience thermal cycles, and cause them to shift back into place. If I suspect a failure is caused by a BGA, I outright replace the BGA chip entirely.
I was lucky enough to get one for free from my grandmother, the original 60gb model. Hasn't failed on me yet. She couldnt get it to work because the plastic was lifted off of the power button, but it was so easy to fix. Been using it for about 2 years now, no problems yet. It belonged to a relative who died a few years ago too, so it was probably used from 2006 to 2014, then given to me in 2020.
That's amazing! If i may, I highly reccomend softmodding your console to figure out the temperatures. The stock fan curve on the PS3 is way too low. My own PS3 seemed nice and cool and quiet, until I installed webman and realized that my CPU and GPU were running constantly at around 85 degrees. Thanks to webman, I set my fans to keep the temps below 69 and, altough noisy, at least I know i won't reach those dangerous temperatures.
@@Tina.Di.Napoli It doesn't, many people have been using it for years and haven't reported any side ffects aside from noise. Plus, when have you seen any fans break unless someone purposefully hit them or something.
Amazing video, I thought I check out 10 minutes and watched the whole thing. I can tell the amount of work that went into the editing alone without any of the prior research. Really interesting and I learnt lots about the chip design. Well done, thanks for making this video and thanks for the credit👍👍👍👍
It's probably one of the most difficult levels of rework there is. It's learnable, but VERY difficult. And capable equipment can be expensive. Most techs call it unrepairable when they track the error to a large BGA package like the CPU, GPU, or whatever.
Kaz Hiro was right about the Playstation 3 remaining relevant up through 2016, Persona 5 released that year. He didn't even need to have insider knowledge of that considering how late Persona 4 was releasing on the Playstation 2.
What a journey, my hands aren't made precise enough to do good work in modern-ish electronics like this so I love to live vicariously through dedicated folks like you. I wish you luck in everything you attempt, you've about earned it.
Mentioning Louis Rossmann explains everything. Thank you for that detailed explanation and research, this is a superb documentary with lots of facts! I am a repair guy myself, I know much of this stuff already, but still learned a lot from this video.
One of my viewers have pointed me to this video after watching one of my PS3 "repairs" (now I feel I just wasted my time but hey!). This video is AWESOME. First, it's packed with information. And not just speculation but proper scientific data and knowledge you collected in God knows how much time and elaborated for us. Second, it's an immense editing job. It's a bit sad to hear that reballing and reflowing and Tokins are not as effective as the Dark Side wanted us to believe. But indeed it's nice to know what's happening and that there is an option. Thank you so much for this video - and for your contribution on the community. You have my greatest respect and appreciation. I will link this video on my PS3 videos.
I don't think you did, pry open one of these and then pry open a brand new, the old ones are obviously toasted inside, and most people repairing just don't use more capacitance with proper ceramics capacitors added, to me it's still these caps, i did like i said and i have a fat model recovered and working almost daily for 4 years now.
this feels like a rollercoaster. the dedication towards this console is immense. i applaud your work for making it into a comprehensible video for everyone to see. and everyone does need to see this. a good video and a fine story Felix.
Jesus Christ, what an incredibly thorough, informative, and high quality video. I wasn't even planning on watching more than 20 minutes. Heck, I was gonna turn off the PC regardless cuz it's late AF... but I just could not resist watching this all the way through. So glad I got this random gem from a small channel right before bed. Kudos to you and everyone involved in this journey and its documentation.
HUGE respect man! This video should have waaay more views. I have a YLOD ps3 that was waiting for me to change NEC/TOKIN capacitors so you've saved my effort. I think there's one guy in Poland doing Frankenstein mods, have to source a 40nn and ask him for the price of such service
that was one of the most comprehensive, funny and well documented YT videos I've seen. I remember reading through your posts when fixing PS3s. You just earned a sub, after just one video. Amazing work!
Your obsession ended up being useful to yourself and the retro/repair community. Thank you for your immense effort and for compiling a summary of your findings and experiences in such a detailed video!
This video deserves so much love @RIP-Felix. I’m going to send this across to as many people I know in the gaming and other industries. Looking forward to seeing more content. ❤
i have never ever had a ps3 and never ever heard it has a thing similar to x360's red ring. but i have learned a lot from this video. i feel like i have to show my deep respect to all the work and effort it took to collect, compile and present this information in a way familiar even to a complete outsider like me. in my opinion it may be tough for this video to go viral enough, but it is still possible. it is a matter of clicking on it to "peek for a couple of minutes" to find yourself watching it till the end and recommending it to others to spread the word. keep up the good work. you have created something very beautiful!
Man 7:00 - 10:00 had me laughing so hard. Amazing video man. I've been reading a lot of your stuff on psx place. I really do appreciate the time and research you put into this. Saves people like me so much time when trying to save these consoles.
What a journey this was. Thank you for this wealth of information. I appreciate your efforts. It was enjoyable. On topic, I have a fat CECHC04 PS3 that has a simple RLOD and took it to a repair shop since I didn't have the tech to fix it myself. They said it is "beyond repair", but I know they are inexperienced, so I didn't urge them to try harder. After trying all of the obvious soft troubleshooting and plug in and out fixes, I was about to change the NEC/Tokin myself but now I'm for sure going the Frankenstein way.
Just simply incredible, outstanding dedication and work. I can’t fathom putting this much time into a problem that’s existed for nearly 2 decades. Really proves that any goal like this of fixing something that might even seem to be “unfixable” just takes time, effort, patience, a hell load of dedication as seen by your efforts. Just really inspiring stuff.
Holy smokes, that was engaging. Kept me captivated for 86 minutes straight. Absolutely fascinating and extremely well researched and presented. I understand this was a massive labour of love, but I really hope more in-depth technical videos are made like this (with quieter background music, maybe?)
Here: th-cam.com/video/Za7WTNwAX0c/w-d-xo.html I liked the metaphor, but I get that many feel they're cringe. So I edited and released an alternate version. They're severely reduced, not gone. I was ruthless, but the conclusion wouldn't make sense unless I kept a bare minimum. It shaves 5 minutes off the length. Thanks for the feedback. I do care.
@@ripfelix3020 Fair play! Great response. I doubt I'll watch it all the way through again, but had a quick check and the background music is at a much better level now :-)
Thank you for making this very comprehensive video about PS3 YLOD!! I am amazed by your journey from modding retro consoles to doing deep dive into engineering lectures, etc!! Great great job!
This was truly amazing. So much information. You won me over. And I will need to watch this 10 more times to fully absorb it all. Thank you for the information first and foremost. It is very time consuming to dig into issues such as this. And it is very much appreciated. You win the decade with this.
Your origin story is exactly where I am right now in my console journey. Just for fun and to see if I can do it. I have made zero money selling anything I do sell. This is a really informative and (with a little techincal knowledge) informative beyond expectation. I was able to grasp everything and understand what you had presented. Also engaging/humorous with the Star Wars tie-ins.
I'm not entirely sure how this video managed to sneak into my recommendations list, but I surely enough glad it did. Not only was it captivating, but the sheer amount of digging, time, work put into it is praise worthy. Although I feel like it's a shame (and slightly infuriating) that people like you have to go through such struggles in order to understand the root causes of these failures while Microsoft and Sony (among others) decides to stay silent or very vague about it, I'm glad you and all those that contributed to investigate the issue helped bringing this video and solutions up, and that you managed to learn so much along the way. Wish you the best. Cheers.
I have been completely in love for PS3 since its lauching from 2006 and i was very sad about YLOD issues, it broke my heart to know that thousands of thousands of PS3 consoles was discarted and will be trash forever. This video brought me A NEW HOPE about the future of the PS3. Nowadays i am working with all games repair and I have a small store, and im glad to tell you i am going to learn how make that repair and accept the challenge: do not let any PS3 phat become gargabe anymore! Thanks a lot for the video, PS3 lives forever!
This is truly a remarkable factual video with a clear insight to the issue and your journey with the issue . Obsession is key to success and understanding. If your not obsessed your not giving it 100%.
This honestly needs to blow up and be spread all over gaming media and social sites. Absolutely amazing video dude. Thank you for all that you've done.
I come here to confirm that the heat gun workaround lasted for me exactly 2 weeks, like you stated. at least it was useful to backup everything before the eventual demise.
Yeah, that one of the legitimate uses for the hair dryer trick. As long as you dont go overboard and melt plastic thinking you're gonna reflow it, then it's mostly harmless. Just need to get warm so it turns on Once on, it'll usually stay on for that session. So long enough to save important stuff and maby check errorlog on ps3toolset.com. That way you know what happened and how to fix.
The last console I ever owned was a Sega Mega Drive (aka Genesis), yet as a computer tech I find these breakdowns fascinating. I remember the dark era of '07-08 dying NVIDIA laptop GPUs like it was yesterday. Great work!
Holy hell. Fantastic deep-dive my good man. This compliment comes from an EE with 15 years of PCB layout experience. Sidenote: At 56:31, that's just a BGA machine. It can be used to put new BGAs on boards if new parts are available.
Fantastic effort and accomplishment. I've done some repairing over the years. Nothing huge like getting to the bottom of something that affected millions of people. The rest of this post is some of my most interesting stories that I felt compelled to share after watching this. Keep in mind I'm just an amateur. I fixed a Dell laptop motherboard that wouldn't recognize OEM power bricks and charge while running. After ruling out all the simpler causes, I used a brass scouring pad to trace the motherboard and draw a schematic. I figured out that a tiny analog multiplexer chip had burned out, and after I replaced it the laptop was able to detect an OEM power brick again. (I don't know what caused it to burn out originally; probably a zap from static electricity into the power connector's communication pin) I found the cause of some mysterious old Viewsonic DLP projector failures. Their power boards use the EM shield to make critical electrical connections. If a housing screw is loose, it literally disconnects the ground plane sections on the power board and keeps it from powering on. Whoever designed it that way should've soldered the shield to the power board. Bump it or look at it funny and the projector would stop working. I fixed an HP LCD monitor that was dropped on the worst corner, smashing the power and menu buttons. The tiny button board had some broken solder joints from flexing and missing components. The power button had it's own signal wire, but the other buttons all shared one. I replaced broken tactile switches, and identified the other missing components as just resistors. Each of those control buttons had a distinct pull-down resistor value, with their shared one wire signal fed into an analog input on the monitor's main board. That struck me as being a sneaky way to reduce the conductor count on their cabling and probably use the ADC sampling rate to debounce them. Several years ago I bought four broken PS3 slim consoles on eBay. I put very minimal effort into repairing them; just replacing the thermal paste. That was actually enough to get half of them working again long term. I gave one to my father for playing games on, and used the other as a convenient blu-ray player for myself. Their power supplies have come in more useful than the consoles themselves, over the years (I'm more of a desktop gamer). I'm using the PSU from one that wasn't fixable to power a GTX 980 desktop graphics card connected to a laptop via a mini-PCIe to 1x PCIe adapter. The GTX980 was firmware underclocked and undervoltage to keep it below 80W at all times and it has been happily running 24/7 sitting in the lower half of a plastic toolbox I use to hold the card and laptop together. I'm glad in hindsight that I didn't attempt to fix early model PS3s with the YLOD. I haven't found refurbishing electronics to be a good way to make money (and I stopped trying that a long time ago), but it's a great way to get useful hardware.
Amazing video, I recently got a PS3 FAT for around $75 USD, it's a CECHA01 from March 2007 and it doesn't seem to have any issues, but I was worried and had knowledge of the YLOD, was about to go and do preventing maintenance replacing the NEC/TOKIN capacitors when I saw this video while looking at all the possible causes, and it sure saved me from doing something stupid, new sub def, and amazing work !
I'm in the same boat. I'm going to crack mine open and airblast the dust out, then replace the thermal compound and pads but other than that I think I might just keep it as is. I heard a PSU swap is also good? Any recommendation?
Damn kudos to you man, my original phat one is long dead with a YLOD fix that failed a few weeks later... I bought 2 backup ones a few years ago for like 50 and 75$ as well before they started getting youtube popular. Also Sony not doing backwards compability is not helping to finding those together with the failure rate. I wish I had the balls of you to fix those capacitors, or how difficult is it? Is it reball difficult?
@@henrik1743 The capacitors can fail but as the video says is rarely the reason why they fail. Been servicing ps3s for a while now(not any more) but I can think of maybe 1 situation where it was a capacitor. In most cases, through proper syscon diagnosis, its simply RSX failure. The real truth is, most RSX will fail. You can only take some preventative measures like doing everything possible to make the ps3 run cool. Replacing thermal pads, delid+repaste and changing psu. My advice, buy a slim ps3, jail break. Its simple and quick. You put in your ps2 disc and install it directly to the HDD. Its 85%+ Compatibility. When you find a non compatible game, bust out your PHAT ps3.
@@grizzlybearking1878 Hey man, thanks for dropping your knowledge and educating me on the issue. So you would say that if the unit has YLOD and a "fixed" YLOD it needs a reball (RSX failure = reball, right?). Yeah I bought 2 PS3 slims of specific years and models to use jailbreak but then I never got the thumb out my ass, I just played skate 2 and 3 with my friends. I then noticed the disc loading very weirdly and then the blueray drive failed on me on my ps3 slim lmfao! So I will just keep my 2 working phats in the closet until I find someone that can dissesamble and take care of them, but it's super hard to find in the nordics where I live cause it's so niché and labour is super expensive here.. Like you say, some games aren't compatible and I learned that when using my Phat as well, when playing driv3r the missions would just fail in really weird ways and AI breaking pathing to make progress impossible. So I have 2 PS2 slims I play on now, never ever had a PS2 slim fail, they are built as tanks.
I just started my own console repairing journey helping restore my and my friends consoles and cartridges. Your video captures my passion and obsession with this perfectly. I cant wait to continue repairing.
It was definitely sad. Mine was bought around March 2007. It died in September of 2009. Luckily by then they were replacing them for free. In my case, I had bought it in France but moved to Spain in summer 2007. So I tried explaining and after enough time (and money, as it cost to call them), I agreed to a refurbished 80GB as a 60GB replacement would take 5-6 months according to them. Another year warranty though. They said 2 months for the 80GB. It took 5 days and it turned out to be brand new, never opened. I felt so lucky but wondered if I should've said 60GB instead. Maybe it would've been refurbished and would've died again anyway. Eventually in 2011 I bought a Slim. I still have both consoles. In fact, I recently hacked my old 80GB with an upgraded 120GB SSD. It runs CFW and I'm able to download games directly from the consoles. From any region. DLC too. Only things ever released digitally on the store, unfortunately. But I can download everything else on a PC and transfer it with a USB drive. Easy. Also, I can play most PS2 games digitally or insert a PS2 disc and copy it over to play. I haven't tried running discs natively. I will soon. It's just so awesome with CFW. No need to seek an original launch model. My newer 80GB is fine.
This video is amazing!. Thank you very much, Felix. It should help debunk lots of myths that are (still) out there because of the outdated and misleading tutorials.
Just finished watching this. I have an A series PS3 that I bought when they first came out and for the past 8 years or so it has been sitting collecting dust due to the YLOD. There's no way in hell I'm smart or technical enough to try and fix it so buying a PS2 is likely what I'll end up doing. Thank you for all of your hard work with this.
I'm having to learn to work with SMD PCBs from a standpoint of coming from waneing days of wire-wrapping and breadboards made from wooden, well breadboards and germanium trannies to chips sans leads that have switching times in the GHz region @@ripfelix3020 . I just figured (recently) from watching Bogatin that copper pour causes more problems than it solves. And was taught - *always* cover the board in as much copper as possible... and so on. But learning new stuff is great!!
This is the kind of in-depth analysis that the YLOD needed for a long time. At some point I started believing into the capacitor failure narrative, but it honestly always sounded too good to be true. Even if this video doesn't ultimately give a definitive solution to the problem (which is often hard to do for complex problems...) it surely is a new starting point for discussion, free from all the old myths. Personally I own a jailbroken slim PS3 (CECH-2004) that I have since 2012 and it's pretty much on par with a retrocompatible fat model, minus the style points. You can easily play any PS2 ISOs on it thanks to CFW, don't know if it's possible to load discs now but IIRC it wasn't possible when the PS2 compatibility was first made available. If you want to get a PS3 just for that, I recommend that you go for a slim model and jailbreak it, which is much easier to do now than 10 years ago. Maybe try to avoid any 65nm RSX, but if you have no choice, with CFW you can also set custom fan curves very easily, and make sure that your console will always stay below 70°C... though maybe at the small price of insane noise levels when the fans hit max speed.
I've watched this like five times in the past year because it's just so good. The PS3 is my favorite piece of technology ever created. From a gaming perspective, media consumption perspective, and tinkering perspective. It's incredible with a very rich history. Thank you for making this video.
I have quite a lot of knoleadge about electronics, but WOW, the amount of work and research you've managed to put in a single 90 min video is mindblowing and proves you are a profesional. Seriously, congrats, this is one of the best and most detailed videos I've seen about electronics.
I love those videos. It makes you realize how much goes into something. Like a universe in a small space. I know a lot about life experiences and I have big respect for yours. Good job. This might just be a comment, but me personally send my regards. Great dude.
Thank you for making this "movie"! Great entertainment value, but even more a wealth of knowledge. I have 3 Phats that I need to repair. Now I can move forward on making my own Franky's.
Ouch... My brain hurts😵💫 I am definitely one of those out there that are passionate about this console. I have a CECHA01 that was "refurbished" and a year later went YLOD on me... But this video has given me hope! Thank you for all your dedication towards this project!
This was an outstanding watch, who would have known that such a "simple" question has such an involving answer. I still miss my OG fat every time i remember i used to have one (it died so long ago now it feels like a different lifetime lmao) and it's nice to finally have some clarity on what went wrong with it at least. Fantastic effort for this video, I'm glad I saw it and I wish you the best in the future
I've been a proud PS3 owner since 2008, right before I started my 8th grade class, and 15 years later, I STILL have it, and it still works fine even after all this time. Never had the YLOD event myself ( I didn't even KNOW the PS3 had a yellow light period, lol), so seeing this informative video is definitely well-made
My dad still has his fat PS3 (CECHE01) and I hope to fix it after my dad stored his in the shed many years ago. With your video, I feel confident enough I can at least for now try and do a diagnostic and find the root cause. You’ve just gained a new subscriber, loved to see more of your videos.
I was just about to comment about it being a problem of the time and you’ve gone on to explain this and dissect the issue perfectly. I used to be a repair guy, I’ve also owned lots of devices from this era. nVidia had huge problems with the 8600m gt which caused these same problems with the 2007 MacBook Pro. I had one, it died in two weeks. The Xbox 360, ps3 and this gpu were all defective and all released around the same time. I’m sticking with the conclusion that you should just avoid tech produced during this time due to lots of known manufacturing defects at large scale operations. Thanks for breaking this down even further!
Neeeeeerd!! Jokes aside, this is incredible. I'm 20 minutes into the video and hooked. The info, the humor, and the presentation is a 10/10 man. I'm looking forward to going through your other stuff. 🤙
this so far has been the most detailed video I've seen about the notorious YLOD, thank you for the information you have discovered over these last years and the Frankenstein mod information given has for me been particularly useful. i've known the the basics of what it is and why it's useful but i didn't know you can't simply(not simply) transplant a newer rsx and have it work right away.
Wasn’t expecting to watch this full video, but I did. Lol. Even though I do not have a PS3 to fix, I enjoyed learning and being exposed to some engineering. Thank you!
Amazing. What a video. I think you will have over 100'000 subscribers in one year. By the way, I still have my 60gb fat PS3, never experience the yellow light. I know they were getting expensive, but now is getting crazy. Last year I play games on it like always. And during covid was the first time I opened it for cleaning, thermal paste change and hard disc update. Its amazing.
Recently got myself a CECHA00 (Japanese) fatty boi in pretty nice condition, warranty seal is still intact. I absolutely falled in love with that thing, one of the most beautiful, functional and all-in-one multimedia combine-machine that i ever had. Only one word: the Beast. With OFW, before i jailbroked it and installed 4.84 Rebug D-REX, it was absolutely quiet, even after playing hours of GTA 5 and The Last of US on it, fan speed barely rumped up a step or two. Shortly after i installed CFW on console and swapped 60 GB HDD for 1 TB, immediately chaged fan settings to 60 C max in any condition, and to 50% fan constant while loading PS2 games. And even in GTA 5, console is easily managing to keep both CELL and RSX under 60, with fan speed max at around 45-50% after 12 hours of playing. Also, i checked the Syscon errorlog via PS3 Toolset, and all 32 errors, through period of 2008 to 2016, was only bunch of A0801001's and A0801004's. I guess these are common, even in perfectly working consoles, and are related to inproper shutdowns (my console have 760 turns on and 726 turns off, so the 34 difference probably are inproper shutdowns), no worries here. I don't plan to open up console really, even though if result will be much better with fresh thermal interfaces. Though it has only 68 days of total uptime, it wasn't used intensive, which is good. And i think the results with custom fan speed is pretty damn solid for never opened 17-years old console. My question is, will that sort of preventive maintenance be enough to keep that baby alive for as long as possible? Or still, regular heating and cooling cycles, even with temps under 60 C, will slowly kill of the RSX bumps? Will appreciate some more advices for that fantastic console. P.S. Thanks for that insane good quality video and all the research that you are done in that topic, you did amazing job for the community of PS3. //P.S.S. My english isn't that good and not native, so sorry if i did some mistakes in spelling and grammar.
I think you've done what you can. Enjoy the beast while it lasts! No need to worry. But I would reccomend dumping the ERK so if it does die you can decrypt the HDD and retrieve your saves/whatever else.
Sir, you are hero. It's impossible to underestimate the work done here. Though i'm not a PS3-fat hunter, I still was looking for good explanation on mid-2000s gpus crisis. I'm a laptop collector, and some interesting models suffered from this issue.
Thanks for the informative video. I think it was Eisenstein that said something along the lines of “if you truly understand something then you can teach it” That what this video is to me. Really well made. I for one liked the Star Wars bits they fit really well. And you can tell this project met the world to you. Ik you mentioned not being a engineer but sir. The way you think is Excatly what most engineers lack. That’s coming from a ChemE
![The Story of the Playstation (Complete Series) [feat. Drunk Metroid]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/53yK3giVO1Y/mqdefault.jpg)
Kiaw's neighbor here, we know her as halina in real world. Her contribution is so big that her playstation repair shop always crowded, until she passed away because of breast cancer. Her contribution never be forgotten, rest in peace Halina
Huh, he said brother...but his english isn't great (or google translate). So maybe it got lost in translation.
@@ripfelix3020 perhaps, the account also handled by her husband.
I don't know ¯\_༼ •́ ͜ʖ •̀ ༽_/¯
Currently I lost contact with him since their family move to jakarta.
Wow, what are the odds you'd see this video? Crazy
@@ripfelix3020 I love tinkering low-level stuff like this, coincidentally youtube just recommended your video to me :)
By the way, I have a story to tell about the era of PS3 at my hometown until the bubble bursts
@@KangJangkrik hey I checked out your channel and loved your playlists! why am I not surprised that a low-level tinkerer is an anime enjoyer? similar minds think alike huh
As a retired electronic engineer, I found your discourse on the PS3 YLOD and your conclusions/explanations fascinating and extremely informative. I have two PS3 first generation consoles with the RSX CXD2971 that have been languishing in ESD protective bags in my attic. I've kept them for exactly the reasons you mentioned-they are 100% reverse compatible for the PS2 AND PS1 consoles, and that's why I didn't junk them when they failed. Funny thing, though-my original PS1 console, and my two later PS2 consoles (not to mention my Mattel Intellivision) are still working perfectly after all these years. You did a fantastic job with this video, and it was a pleasure for me to view it. Thank you!
Are you going to repair them it kinda seems like fun it’s a shame that I threw away my original ps3😢
@Mr Guru People should move on. But that is not enough. Avoid anything that you have no future place to move on to. And o boy that is hard. Even Linux have no dam hope. But it would be nice to force Windows to go away and get something just something that promotes keeping stuff working for decades without resorting to emulations. But the undertaking to make software and hardware that try and keep stuff portable is just... Maddening. But software being tied to hardware that have no path going forward is just wrong. PS2 and slim PS3 is not going to work forever. Like no joke pirates are probably going to look like heroes in the future as they are the only ones working on preserving anything right after launch of something. If console makers and the like had there way we all had only had Stadia access subscriptions. And no say in keeping anything and stuff just vanishing forever.
@Mr Guru Consoomer mentality
@Mr Guru but how do you make a SOC repairable? There is no way to maintain this on the level of tech that we have right now. Maybe more access to diagnostics tools is necessary, but, requesting that this kind of issue to be easily fixable is more than a dream, it's impossible.
@Mr Guru New common CPUs are not generally available - unless they're the latest generation or two. And you need CPUs from the same generation as your motherboard, or 1 ahead.
Absolutely massive effort and a wealth of information. Everyone who owns the console needs to see this.
Make that... "Everyone who is 'about' to own the console". Eg. Me in two weeks😭...
this came out over 10 years ago did u not know that?
@@coltenosborne9156 The info was there, but not in the way that it is presented and analysed in this video. I myself didn't need much convincing, however people who have only heard of the nectokin 'fix" can benefit from the explanations.
Okay but you said everyone that owns the console we are now on the ps5 how many people are still playing ps3?
@@coltenosborne9156 Lots of retrogamers, you''d be surprised. I myself rarely play ps5. Not sure why you seem so bothered by what I said.
FELIX you MAD MAN! This is TOP SHELF CONTENT! Bar none, one of the best I have seen this year. CONGRATS DUDE!
I just wanted to say thank you for this video. The human brains thirst for logic and its incredible ability to problem solve still leaves me in awe. What a species we've become.
Most of those human brains are more likely to be found filming themselves putting their console in an oven or going for a run with an N95 strapped to their face. We don't thirst for logic, we force ourselves to use it because it's the only way to solve problems. At least that's how I'd say it. Could be wrong, I'm not a biologist. I agree, the video is good, especially with a keyboard handy to skip the unnecessary asides. He does shine when sticking to the point.
What?
@@amarissimus29 Everybody look the arrogant faux-intellectual thinks he is making a point - everyone point and laugh
@@xFluinglmao he was just gabbing😂
@@borginburkes1819 Exactly my point yeah
I absolutely love how you went crazy and reverse engineered the entire ps3 boot sequence and hardware engineering absolute fucking mad respect lol
I'm gay too buddy lol
@@N_g_erYou’re gay
Ewwwww@@N_g_er
You just speedrunned the ps3 ylod. You're a frickin master. No seriously, I'm impressed. Your obsession with this thing resulted in a long and very detailed video. I love it. If there was an award for such a work, you deserved it, as well as the community that helped you. I just replugged my old ps3 after seeing your video, I installed a cfw, and ran some games. It's greatful to see that it still works well after hearing what you're saying. You deserve better than only 400 subscribers.
he's up to 2K as of today
Nah, It was a multi-year marathon that he's summarizing for us. I wouldn't really call that a speedrun...
He’s up to almost 4000 now.😮
Be carefull with custom firmwars, mine changed the fan curves which killed it after some hours :(
I got YLOD running mine for 3 years straight :(
This is a golden nugget of information and deep dive into the YLOD. Well done sir, you had my complete attention for over an hour!
Early 2007, my ps3 died and i had to open it up and look around. Learned about thermal paste that day.
Back in 2011 i started the reballing business. For me having a bga chip removed, reballed down to 0.5mm balls and make the laptop boot again, was already the big accomplishment. I did not have the time and will to investigate further. After a few years i was shocked to discover that most of the reworked laptops were already dead in the first year and the others soon to come. So making the reballing as advicable as a reflow. The truth was that most clients, like you stated, because of being charged high, did not consider about returning again and simply got rid of the notebook.
Later, i tried to understand what was going on. I even reballed and removed the chips just to see the soldering. In 90% of cases it was perfect. So sth else was to blame. Digging around i learned about the bump and substrate thing, and since then went only for revised chips.
This video, was like a dejavu of my journey.
Thank you for this.
Please teach me you're skills
@@Shoadowwizardtip 1. don't drink cafe, tip 2 idk
Thats it, the whole story and the true cause of the YLOD. I cant listen to people anymore blaming the nec tokins, everyone who has worked and tried this tantalum fix knows that almost always the issue lies beneath the RSX. I have also got obsessed and dunno why i have over 20 of them i want to try the Frankenstein mod but not until i practice on scrap not BC boards. Thank you for all your hard work
About nec tokins when i heard about it for the first time i was like what kind of deamons are they trying to hunt?! It realy looked like they had found a witch that had to be burned lol It was not good to be a nec tokin at this moment, the darkest hour of these little components! It's still painfull today to see the determination against it, just based on wrong interpretations and not enough research and understanding. Sorry for my english, not my native language, i work on it everyday to improve myself :)
I want to try the lower NM RSX mod as well.
don't get too ahead of yourself. even in the video, RIP Felix only says this is MAYBE a cause. a POSSIBLE explanation. he has no way of actually checking his hypothesis to be true and assumes a lot of stuff, all of which he clearly outlines in the video. there's no way to say that the root cause of the problem has been found!
@@cheater00 GPU probably was the problem. The Xbox 360 had defective GPUs around the same time too due to defective underfill used by TSMC. It’s incredibly likely this same underfill was used on the PS3 GPU (RSX, is it called? I don’t know much about the PS3).
@@dbwt22 so you confirm it's only a probable explanation. Agreed.
The amount of work required to collect all the technical details and make this video is amazing.
This could easily go on TV or Netflix as an actual documentary. Truly incredible content.
Check out Mystic's documentary on the console war between PS3 and Xbox 360. It's one of the best documentaries I have ever seen on TH-cam. He has done several other good documentaries like the PSP and the PS Vita, but the console war one is by far the best.
As if. What daft hyperbole. It's good for an amateur. That's it.
@@Henkibojj Yea that was amazing
@@cardsharpHS Lol, a documentary doesn't have to be a multi-million dollar project to be worth showing. It's excellent content and very similar to many amateur documentaries already showing on TV and Netflix. If you spent just a few minutes browsing you'd see them. Calm down, bruh.
@@cardsharpHS exactly lol. People are so over the top. This has way too much filler for one thing
My wife picked up a functioning launch PS3 a few months ago. I cleaned it and was happy to find it booted. I put it aside till I could figure out more about keeping it functional. I'd read most of the info you debunked.
I'm super happy you made this video and helped save another PS3 from a flawed mod. Your breakdown is top notch. I looking forward to more of your content.
Don't listen to him, really, i fixed a lot of these, most people in the repair community cheap out putting just the same amount of capacitance than a tokin and no ceramic capacitor, i have a ps3 yloaded 6 years ago that i fixed with more capacitance and a ceramic cap and it's running every day with no problem. Boy, the dude in the video still trusts the datasheet, i trust the measure i did with the removed caps from failed ps3s and they all had at most a third of the capacitance advertised under the advertised temperature, they all were very burned inside compared with brand new tokins. And most people on the internet were using just about the same capacitance as a tokin but with worst tantalum capacitors and no ceramic capacitors backing up high freq, they they did that study expecting improvement with a wrong fix
@@fss1704 what’s the inside look like?
@@Myrmeleos burned, tarnished, blacked, the new ones are not burned. Don't trust me, go search the tutorials people do in these ps3's and tell me how many put the same amount of capacitance in inferior quality tantalum caps with no ceramics, then report it failing again. I usually put more capacitance, ceramics and a low esr electrolytic cap just to be sure and it just never ever ylod again. No wonder if you do the same factory mistake worse it will fail even sooner.
@@fss1704 if you genuinely watched this entire masterclass of a video, and left still thinking that it’s crappy capacitors that still cause YLOD then something is genuinely wrong with you. Seriously.
@@DatGuyWithDaGlasses Open up a new tokin, then open up a faulty tokin, and tell me the difference. 98% of tutorials are SHIT, they try to put the same amount of capacitance that failed with worst ESR capacitors and expect their fix to work. Heck nevermind not having ceramic capacitors.
Fabulous documentary. My only comment as an EE is that we most certainly do not all learn CAD, especially not thermal or mechanical stress CAD. That would likely be in a master's program for a microelectronics engineer, if anything.
Edit: I cannot stress enough how much I love the balance between technicals and storytelling. For me, it's the perfect ratio. I'll be subscribing and hoping you continue. CHEERS!
I appreciate your knowledge and obsession with the research and electrical engineering information that you've displayed with this video.
Im currently fixing, recapping and modding classic game systems. The furthest generation I found i can repair and mod is PS2.
I want to get better, I want to hold that title of Electrical Engineer. I want to be able to contribute to the community. I want to be able to perform highly skilled repairs such as the 40mm RSX Frankenstein Phat PS3.
I apologize for this rant. You've given me an obsession to pursue and I've found a new drive for my work. Thank you RIP Felix.
Wow, THX so much. Very generous of you!
I'm glad my obcession helped light a passion in you too. Electrical Enginnering huh!? Cool! I think I'd probably major in it if I went back, although I'm mor interested in it as it applies to my hobbies. I found it facinating to learn and understand why and how the console fails. That's what kept me interested in digging and learning the technical stuff. There's something rewarding about "discovering" a piece of information that explains a long time mystery. I think those moments are were I find the most enjoyment.
This is the most amazingly detailed and educational PS3 repair video I've ever seen, well done and thank you for sharing.
This video is amazing man. I tried reballing an emmc once and ended up rage quitting lol. Your persistance with learning the root cause and solution to the YLOD issue is inspiring. Now I feel like working on my reball skill and work my way up from little switch emmcs to full blown BGA rework and making myself a Franky Ps3.
Kudus man, very well done
Woah you impressed modzville 😮
Time to binge Luis Rossman videos woop
The YLOD of my original PS3 was the first step on the fork in the road that took me down the path that led me to becoming a jedi level repair tech. Still have it, and it works flawlessly - I don't use it because it's big and noisy and I have a slim, but it was an adventure to fix, reflow done in a gas cooking oven lol. It looks quite cool now, bunch of mods to the cooling etc
@@noth606 learn a bunch of stuff along the way
Do it!!!!
wtf, the sheer amount of research that was needed to produce this video is colossal.. This was massive, glad to see it. Congrats man!
I'm more into emulation over having to have original hardware, however I do always enjoy when original hardware is revived/preserved in working order. Thank you for putting this presentation together.
Iv had every Playstation from launch and they all still work to this day( well besides my ps2 that one was ALWAYS ON for one reasons or another but iv vever had a problem with my ps3 ever)
The only problem iv ever had was with ps4 and it was the USB slot went dead and I had to send it to get replaced and they gave me free ps plus time, which is normal because I built my pc and have a few items be doa when they arrive
@@aaronclay4665*Which version of the PS3 do you have?*
Ps3 emulation still is far from perfect though
@@zwenkwiel816 correct, however there have been major leaps in recent years making the emulation better and better.
@@a_guyontheinternetNot the same as hopping on the ps3 though. Hardware is fun to mess around with!
Crazy how much passion makes or breaks a TH-cam video. I wouldn't have thought I would be siting here watching a documentary on the PS3 Yellow Light of Death (which I experienced when I was a wee lad of 11-12 years back in the late 2000s), but here I am, and this video is thoroughly entertaining. If a documentary is not made correctly, or clearly does not have any heart put into it, it's boring, but this certainly was not. I appreciated all the editing and pacing and scripting that went into this. Excellent job, RIP Felix!
This brings back a lot of memories of 2011. I had an electronics repair business at the time. I repaired a lot of TVs and iphone 4s with proven techniques, and made them even better with higher quality parts when I could. However, when I found out about the 'reball' repairs, and the failing chips, I got into that as well. I purchased some reflow and infrared reballing stations, and started on the process. The Xbox 360 was fairly easy to reball, and I did a number of them before I realized that it was not a permanent solution. I faced an overwhelming sense of guilt over ripping off people who thought this 'fix' was the real thing, when I had no confidence at all that this solution would last. I closed the business after a while, but I always wanted to know the real details of why these errors happened, and tonight by finishing your video I feel like I finally have the answer after all these years.
It's simply a matter of major companies competing in the market on speed and low cost, and taking risks on releasing hardware without proper testing. I still have a ylod CECHA, and I will NOT be doing the TOKIN replacement. I'll be looking at a 40nm chip replacement for it if I can find a shop willing to take that on.
Thanks for all your passion and work, I understand the mindset and need to know when it comes to repair as well as the drive you have to get to the core of the mystery.
Well Sony did it again with the PS5, truly a *L* company
@@MGrey-qb5xz context?
Absolutely love the Dead silence from the audience when they announce the prices
Time tag?
The price definitely warrants that kind of reaction, but let's not forget E3 was also very different at the time, way more investor and press-oriented rather than the consumer-focused events we have nowadays
Also love to point out 4:07 if you don't back it up, its gone forever, wrong, the hard drive should still be intact and could be transferred to another working ps3. Done so thrice for my ps3 and 2 relatives, only thing screwy is to go back in settings and set current ps3 as primary, maybe login again first.
@@ingressman1992I agree however in these cases you had to send the PS3 to Sony and receive a refurbished model. You couldn't keep hold of your hard drive when sending to Sony, so unless you had a way to back that drive up and move the data to your new drive, you lost your data. I'm unsure about this part but a lot of console manufacturers lock out access to the drive so in most cases people were screwed
@curtisss simply swap a new hard drive into it and send it off or if you upgraded the drive to a bigger internal drive, reinstall the original. It's no secret that the hard drive swap/ removal does not violate the warranty seal and can be fiddled with by the user, anywho, the ps3 is far past production and far past warranties, you probably won't be honored and repaired past replacing universally available and still in use parts for future consoles sadly. Actually would be cheaper to buy a used ps3 and hard drive swap than sending a broken ps3 to Sony for repairs.
This actually sheds some light on some issues I've had: I bought an HP gaming laptop around 2006. The GPU failed on it and HP was sued in a class action lawsuit because so many failed. After the whole ordeal, I swore I would never own another HP laptop again. Then my OG Xbox got the RROD when I was stationed in Germany (I actually never saw those Marines shooting up the Xboxes before now, hah), Microsoft wouldn't honor my US warranty because I was out of the states. I swore I would never own another Xbox. I bought an OG PS3 Phat, that lasted less than a year before it died, but Sony eventually warrantied my phat, and sent me another identical one (which still works). I didn't realize these could all be related issues. On a side note, I also swore off Samsung phones, I had a Galaxy S2 that died within a year, but Samsung wouldn't warranty it because... I was stationed out of the states again. Same stupid warranty problem like Microsoft. To this day I still wont buy an Xbox or Samsung phone for not honoring a warranty in the past.
But weren't they right not to "honor" the warranty? I bought an LG from out of my home country and I knew that warranty wouldn't cover it when I left because it said so on the paper. Also the small warranty paper isn't like terms and conditions, it is a really quick read.
If anything their actions was honouring the warranty
The amount of work behind this video is absolutely insane... This is mindblowing, you deserve A LOT of praise! I have a 65nm PS3 that i have not touched in the last 10 years, it makes me want to check its revision, i had no idea there were 2... For BC owners, this work you did is priceless. Thanks a lot for them!
Edit: I stand corrected, the 40gb model I have has a 90nm rsx. It does have a 65nm cpu, but its rsx is not 65nm, so a potential timebomb... Sigh! It works fine though, but it was barely used by its previous owner, and even less by me.
A repaste and clean with some new high-quality thermal pads such as the thermal right pads is enough to keep it working. The A0X is the most sought after PS3 as it has full backward compatibility, not hybrid bc like the later models.
Delid RSX, replace TIM with liquid metal. It won't die.
@@nexxusty if you are going to do that you need to make a mask to protect the surface mount caps on the substrate u advise not to use galium instead get pm 780
@@nexxusty although you need to hope you can keep the chip and the underfill under 70C to prevent the design error from being an issue, might need to watercool the ps3 lol
Same here.. just hoping it’ll survive..
So glad a senior member of the PS3 modding community has made this video dispelling all sorts of stuff. This is such a well documented, researched, and edited video. I really hope all these fake fixes stop being done once and for all. And this should apply to ALL electronics. We should be researching and diagnosing before attempting any repairs! That's repairing 101!!!
well any repair is a repair, if it fixes it - just the wrong repair to a specific device will not improve much or even not anything at all.
This video is the best PS3 video I have seen yet on this topic. The PS3 is my favorite console. I have the launch models, Slim and a Super Slim. The 20GB CECH-B01 is actually my favorite model, no WIFI I use an Ethernet cable anyways. I have CECHA-01 also less components more airflow.
Speaking of airflow very informative section on airflow through the PS3. I never cut holes in the PS3 case specifically on the bottom, so the chips get more air. The air HAS to pass through the PSU. As stated, the holes in the case remove the PS3 intended vacuum of air into the console. The PSU is a HUGE HEAT GENERATOR by removing the air through the PSU only causes more heat to remain inside the console.
17:20 I have held a COK-001 (the board in the CECHA/B-01 console) up to a light source the amount of I called them holes, now I know the real name thermal vias is insane. Sony really wanted to cool this board.
22 hours a week, I am lucky to play 22 hours a month anymore unfortunately.
28:48 I bought a Behar Bros HDMI device for my Dreamcast, and the Behar Bros are releasing on for the OG XBOX soon.
31:19 I watched the XBOX documentary that was a very enjoyable video series (5 Parts).
I got the Red Ringed on my 360, too late for any of the extended warranties Microsoft offered. Bought a Slim 360 did the preventative maintenance thermal pads new paste still going strong.
33:00 I did what Microsoft (or any company for that matter) wants you to do buy another one. Throw out the broke one buy $$$ a NEW ONE.
The launch PS3 consoles the GPU only has 2 heat pipes while the CPU has three heat pipes on the heatsink, making it seen just by looking that the GPU does not need as much cooling. Sony redesigned the PS3 Slim the heat pipes were eliminated.
Your timeline shows what chips were produced in what year never saw that before.
42:57 the 28 nm GPU is in the Super Slim that has a heat pipe, and it sets right on the die with thermal paste for heat transfer.
In my experience I do what I can to prevent YLOD by keeping temps lower in the console. YLOD cannot be fixed, I mean fixed from the factory. The console weather reball, cap replacement, whatever motherboard failures will occur again. The console will never be fixed like it was out of the box. That is just my opinion though.
Enter the Frankenstein PS3 never heard of before this video.
1:22:00 All of my PS3 launch consoles are working, I try my best to prevent the YLOD. Have I been YLOD. YES, I have after that I have been doing research for near 10 years, I found what works for me. I do not repair, reball, Frankenstein consoles. I bought 3 CECHA-01 dead (or were they) just to practice the de-lid of the IHS before I felt comfortable enough to do myself.
Once again excellent video best info I have seen in one format.
Love the Star Wars references XBOX R2-D2, Vader 20GB all black PS3, PS5 Stormtroopers.
I got an original Backwards compatible PS3 back in late 2010. I'll never forget the countless hours I spent playing Little Big Planet.
Just as I was about to finish the game, I got the YLOD. Being as ADHD as I was back then, I couldn't mentally take the time to read the plethora of forum posts about YLODs.
Believe me, I tried. Even being an electronics and DIY Repair nerd myself, I never figured out what happened.
I never knew, until now. I am honestly glad I didn't try to fix it. I would have suffered false hope trying to repair my console.
I guess +1 point for ADHD in this case.
Sadly, I don't have the console anymore, when my simple attempts to fix it didn't give me any results, I had moved on. I forgot about it, and probably left it at someone's house when I moved out.
Now that I am older, and wiser, this video was something I greatly needed. I needed that closure.
Thank you for this, so much. Nothing upsets me more than misinformation, and I narrowly missed becoming a victim of it with something I loved.
Take my upvote, and subscription. You've earned it.
I guess they were intentionallly made to die Quick by Sony, for extra revenew. It never suppose to last and both x-box and PlayStation couldn't care less. I guess many laptop users never even heard about both "circle of Death" and "Yellow Light Of Death"
I can’t believe I watched the whole video. But I can now say it was worth every second. The amount of dedication and enthusiasm the modding community puts into these kind of projects gives me hope that older generation consoles will even be relevant in the distant future. Watching this made me appreciate my Silver PS3 Slim even more and I will take greater care of my retro consoles now.
Thank you for this interesting and informative journey.
I have an unopened CECH-A01 sitting right behind me while watching this. I've got all the means to determine what's probably actually wrong with all your work and hopefully someone has time to at-least bring this one back some day soon.
Thanks for everything you've done; some people are going to be genuinely grateful if not now, for sure in the future, possibly even after we're all gone.
Your obsession has left a genuine footprint in gaming history I don't think anyone can ever remove.
In the same boat here. Building up my own soldering skills. Gonna work on this B Soon
That’s a ton of money sitting behind you
I'm from Chile. First PS3s that arrived here were the 80GB soft-BC ones in 2007. I happened to bought a Japanese CECHA01 from a kid who actually traveled there to grab one. I felt the luckiest guy ever. But it lasted 2 years working fine until RSX chip died. Some time later I just threw it away, because I couldn't find a qualified repair service for it. This was 2 years ago, and now that I saw this video I couldn't be more sad and nostalgic about it, but also inspired to anyhow get another one and try to Frankenstein it. Thank you for that, I truly appreciate your hard work.
I also threw away one of my cecha’s out of pure anger. Fortunately i still have one cecha left but i am too afraid of using it. Maybe i will frankenstein it when i have hundreds of dollars to burn, or just use two seperate consoles.
I ned to frankenstein my checha01
This is a FANTASTIC video. I've been repairing electronics for close to 10 years now, I do a lot of microsoldering and much of the work does involve performing SMD work. However, in my time doing this, I haven't worked on very many PS3s.
I have done BGA rework, but I've never tackled a repair on a BGA where I thought "reball" was the answer to the problem. The _only_ time I reball a BGA is if I've royally screwed up while trying to solder on a replacement, or if the new replacement (or functional, used replacement) requires reballing to be solderable.
The way I look at it, if I suspect the failure may be caused by a BGA flip chip, odds are the chip itself is the failure (or internal board traces), and NOT the BGA. There are SOME exceptions to this, but even in these exceptions, it's a failure involving traces _within the board_ rather than the BGA or the chip itself.
Going back to "reflow" magically fixing a BGA, you addressed this perfectly in this video. People talk about "reflowing" their failing electronics in their kitchen oven, and there's just no way. There's no way you're getting a GPU board, a PS3 motherboard, or ANY of these electronics hot enough to effectively reflow ANYTHING if you shove them in an oven. The fact these electronics worked after being baked like a pizza just further proves it's NOT something wrong with the solder, it's something wrong WITH THE CHIP, or with the board!
These things dissipate SO MUCH HEAT that you require very targeted, very intense heat, just to get solder to wet in the first place. If a kitchen oven set to 380F is all you needed, then electronics manufacturers wouldn't be using reflow ovens that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to assemble their electronics! I always thought it was absolutely ridiculous that people foolishly believed this was somehow "reflowing" solder.
I have always been of the belief the issue with failing BGA flip chips lies in the bumps and/or interposer bonding wires. Heat would naturally cause these components within the package to experience thermal cycles, and cause them to shift back into place. If I suspect a failure is caused by a BGA, I outright replace the BGA chip entirely.
I was lucky enough to get one for free from my grandmother, the original 60gb model. Hasn't failed on me yet. She couldnt get it to work because the plastic was lifted off of the power button, but it was so easy to fix. Been using it for about 2 years now, no problems yet. It belonged to a relative who died a few years ago too, so it was probably used from 2006 to 2014, then given to me in 2020.
That's amazing!
If i may, I highly reccomend softmodding your console to figure out the temperatures. The stock fan curve on the PS3 is way too low. My own PS3 seemed nice and cool and quiet, until I installed webman and realized that my CPU and GPU were running constantly at around 85 degrees. Thanks to webman, I set my fans to keep the temps below 69 and, altough noisy, at least I know i won't reach those dangerous temperatures.
That was the first thing i did!
@@matthewmatteomatheus6483 are you sure that the fans won't break after a while?
I won mine from a Walmart raffle! Installed yellow dog Linux the next day.
@@Tina.Di.Napoli It doesn't, many people have been using it for years and haven't reported any side ffects aside from noise. Plus, when have you seen any fans break unless someone purposefully hit them or something.
Amazing video, I thought I check out 10 minutes and watched the whole thing. I can tell the amount of work that went into the editing alone without any of the prior research. Really interesting and I learnt lots about the chip design. Well done, thanks for making this video and thanks for the credit👍👍👍👍
Is an RSX replacement beyond the scope of trying to fix?
Normally enjoy tinkering but probably gonna rely on a business to hopefully pick this up
It's probably one of the most difficult levels of rework there is. It's learnable, but VERY difficult. And capable equipment can be expensive. Most techs call it unrepairable when they track the error to a large BGA package like the CPU, GPU, or whatever.
Vince does the ps3 you fixed still work?
My mate vinc is here hello im a big fun of you i like your work on the rolls Royce
Kaz Hiro was right about the Playstation 3 remaining relevant up through 2016, Persona 5 released that year. He didn't even need to have insider knowledge of that considering how late Persona 4 was releasing on the Playstation 2.
What a journey, my hands aren't made precise enough to do good work in modern-ish electronics like this so I love to live vicariously through dedicated folks like you. I wish you luck in everything you attempt, you've about earned it.
Mentioning Louis Rossmann explains everything. Thank you for that detailed explanation and research, this is a superb documentary with lots of facts! I am a repair guy myself, I know much of this stuff already, but still learned a lot from this video.
One of my viewers have pointed me to this video after watching one of my PS3 "repairs" (now I feel I just wasted my time but hey!). This video is AWESOME. First, it's packed with information. And not just speculation but proper scientific data and knowledge you collected in God knows how much time and elaborated for us. Second, it's an immense editing job. It's a bit sad to hear that reballing and reflowing and Tokins are not as effective as the Dark Side wanted us to believe. But indeed it's nice to know what's happening and that there is an option. Thank you so much for this video - and for your contribution on the community. You have my greatest respect and appreciation. I will link this video on my PS3 videos.
I don't think you did, pry open one of these and then pry open a brand new, the old ones are obviously toasted inside, and most people repairing just don't use more capacitance with proper ceramics capacitors added, to me it's still these caps, i did like i said and i have a fat model recovered and working almost daily for 4 years now.
this feels like a rollercoaster.
the dedication towards this console is immense.
i applaud your work for making it into a comprehensible video for everyone to see.
and everyone does need to see this.
a good video and a fine story Felix.
The best Video if seen in years. Thank you for that
wow! It means a lot. Thank you!
Jesus Christ, what an incredibly thorough, informative, and high quality video. I wasn't even planning on watching more than 20 minutes. Heck, I was gonna turn off the PC regardless cuz it's late AF... but I just could not resist watching this all the way through. So glad I got this random gem from a small channel right before bed. Kudos to you and everyone involved in this journey and its documentation.
Lol I always watch TH-cam on my phone, not on computers
Sitting at a desk feels like work
Let's not take the Lord's name in vain when we're jamming huh
@@SFTaYZa As Jesus Christ, the Lord God is my witness, I will never give up my freedom of speech.
@@SFTaYZamy lord is Spiderman, so it's all good. But I don't dictate other's speech and he isn't butthurt when someone uses his name "in vain".
HUGE respect man! This video should have waaay more views. I have a YLOD ps3 that was waiting for me to change NEC/TOKIN capacitors so you've saved my effort. I think there's one guy in Poland doing Frankenstein mods, have to source a 40nn and ask him for the price of such service
that was one of the most comprehensive, funny and well documented YT videos I've seen. I remember reading through your posts when fixing PS3s.
You just earned a sub, after just one video. Amazing work!
Your obsession ended up being useful to yourself and the retro/repair community. Thank you for your immense effort and for compiling a summary of your findings and experiences in such a detailed video!
This video deserves so much love @RIP-Felix. I’m going to send this across to as many people I know in the gaming and other industries. Looking forward to seeing more content. ❤
i have never ever had a ps3 and never ever heard it has a thing similar to x360's red ring. but i have learned a lot from this video. i feel like i have to show my deep respect to all the work and effort it took to collect, compile and present this information in a way familiar even to a complete outsider like me.
in my opinion it may be tough for this video to go viral enough, but it is still possible. it is a matter of clicking on it to "peek for a couple of minutes" to find yourself watching it till the end and recommending it to others to spread the word.
keep up the good work. you have created something very beautiful!
Man 7:00 - 10:00 had me laughing so hard. Amazing video man. I've been reading a lot of your stuff on psx place. I really do appreciate the time and research you put into this. Saves people like me so much time when trying to save these consoles.
A great video. The editing and storytelling are 10/10
What a journey this was. Thank you for this wealth of information. I appreciate your efforts. It was enjoyable.
On topic, I have a fat CECHC04 PS3 that has a simple RLOD and took it to a repair shop since I didn't have the tech to fix it myself. They said it is "beyond repair", but I know they are inexperienced, so I didn't urge them to try harder. After trying all of the obvious soft troubleshooting and plug in and out fixes, I was about to change the NEC/Tokin myself but now I'm for sure going the Frankenstein way.
Just simply incredible, outstanding dedication and work.
I can’t fathom putting this much time into a problem that’s existed for nearly 2 decades.
Really proves that any goal like this of fixing something that might even seem to be “unfixable” just takes time, effort, patience, a hell load of dedication as seen by your efforts. Just really inspiring stuff.
Holy smokes, that was engaging. Kept me captivated for 86 minutes straight. Absolutely fascinating and extremely well researched and presented. I understand this was a massive labour of love, but I really hope more in-depth technical videos are made like this (with quieter background music, maybe?)
The ominous music is driving me nuts
Yeah, enjoyed the information, went nicely in depth. Coulda done without the ADHD triggering background music and star wars clips though!
"Holy smokes"
Meanwhile the console, literally smoking:
Here:
th-cam.com/video/Za7WTNwAX0c/w-d-xo.html
I liked the metaphor, but I get that many feel they're cringe. So I edited and released an alternate version. They're severely reduced, not gone. I was ruthless, but the conclusion wouldn't make sense unless I kept a bare minimum. It shaves 5 minutes off the length. Thanks for the feedback. I do care.
@@ripfelix3020 Fair play! Great response. I doubt I'll watch it all the way through again, but had a quick check and the background music is at a much better level now :-)
Thank you for making this very comprehensive video about PS3 YLOD!! I am amazed by your journey from modding retro consoles to doing deep dive into engineering lectures, etc!! Great great job!
This was truly amazing. So much information. You won me over. And I will need to watch this 10 more times to fully absorb it all. Thank you for the information first and foremost. It is very time consuming to dig into issues such as this. And it is very much appreciated. You win the decade with this.
Your origin story is exactly where I am right now in my console journey. Just for fun and to see if I can do it. I have made zero money selling anything I do sell. This is a really informative and (with a little techincal knowledge) informative beyond expectation. I was able to grasp everything and understand what you had presented. Also engaging/humorous with the Star Wars tie-ins.
I'm not entirely sure how this video managed to sneak into my recommendations list, but I surely enough glad it did.
Not only was it captivating, but the sheer amount of digging, time, work put into it is praise worthy.
Although I feel like it's a shame (and slightly infuriating) that people like you have to go through such struggles in order to understand the root causes of these failures while Microsoft and Sony (among others) decides to stay silent or very vague about it, I'm glad you and all those that contributed to investigate the issue helped bringing this video and solutions up, and that you managed to learn so much along the way.
Wish you the best.
Cheers.
I have been completely in love for PS3 since its lauching from 2006 and i was very sad about YLOD issues, it broke my heart to know that thousands of thousands of PS3 consoles was discarted and will be trash forever. This video brought me A NEW HOPE about the future of the PS3. Nowadays i am working with all games repair and I have a small store, and im glad to tell you i am going to learn how make that repair and accept the challenge: do not let any PS3 phat become gargabe anymore!
Thanks a lot for the video, PS3 lives forever!
I lke your obsession and the ability to expain complex things in an understandable and structured way for the average joe. Great video!
This is truly a remarkable factual video with a clear insight to the issue and your journey with the issue .
Obsession is key to success and understanding. If your not obsessed your not giving it 100%.
This honestly needs to blow up and be spread all over gaming media and social sites. Absolutely amazing video dude. Thank you for all that you've done.
I come here to confirm that the heat gun workaround lasted for me exactly 2 weeks, like you stated. at least it was useful to backup everything before the eventual demise.
Yeah, that one of the legitimate uses for the hair dryer trick. As long as you dont go overboard and melt plastic thinking you're gonna reflow it, then it's mostly harmless. Just need to get warm so it turns on Once on, it'll usually stay on for that session. So long enough to save important stuff and maby check errorlog on ps3toolset.com. That way you know what happened and how to fix.
This is the content I love to see on the internet. The amount of time spent to deliver this level of quality is admirable. Thank you.
The last console I ever owned was a Sega Mega Drive (aka Genesis), yet as a computer tech I find these breakdowns fascinating. I remember the dark era of '07-08 dying NVIDIA laptop GPUs like it was yesterday. Great work!
Holy hell. Fantastic deep-dive my good man. This compliment comes from an EE with 15 years of PCB layout experience.
Sidenote: At 56:31, that's just a BGA machine. It can be used to put new BGAs on boards if new parts are available.
beside Louis knows what he is talking about. He saved shitton of apple products and is probably one of they key people in right to repair movement.
Amazing video/documentary. Huge respect and props for all the time and research this likely took.
Hoping to see more of your PS3 content over time.
Wow, thank you so much!
Impressive dude! I lost an x360 back in 2007 and this video is highly informative, really amazing job, what a pro! Congratulations keep on going!
Fantastic effort and accomplishment. I've done some repairing over the years. Nothing huge like getting to the bottom of something that affected millions of people.
The rest of this post is some of my most interesting stories that I felt compelled to share after watching this. Keep in mind I'm just an amateur.
I fixed a Dell laptop motherboard that wouldn't recognize OEM power bricks and charge while running. After ruling out all the simpler causes, I used a brass scouring pad to trace the motherboard and draw a schematic. I figured out that a tiny analog multiplexer chip had burned out, and after I replaced it the laptop was able to detect an OEM power brick again. (I don't know what caused it to burn out originally; probably a zap from static electricity into the power connector's communication pin)
I found the cause of some mysterious old Viewsonic DLP projector failures. Their power boards use the EM shield to make critical electrical connections. If a housing screw is loose, it literally disconnects the ground plane sections on the power board and keeps it from powering on. Whoever designed it that way should've soldered the shield to the power board. Bump it or look at it funny and the projector would stop working.
I fixed an HP LCD monitor that was dropped on the worst corner, smashing the power and menu buttons. The tiny button board had some broken solder joints from flexing and missing components. The power button had it's own signal wire, but the other buttons all shared one. I replaced broken tactile switches, and identified the other missing components as just resistors. Each of those control buttons had a distinct pull-down resistor value, with their shared one wire signal fed into an analog input on the monitor's main board. That struck me as being a sneaky way to reduce the conductor count on their cabling and probably use the ADC sampling rate to debounce them.
Several years ago I bought four broken PS3 slim consoles on eBay. I put very minimal effort into repairing them; just replacing the thermal paste. That was actually enough to get half of them working again long term. I gave one to my father for playing games on, and used the other as a convenient blu-ray player for myself. Their power supplies have come in more useful than the consoles themselves, over the years (I'm more of a desktop gamer). I'm using the PSU from one that wasn't fixable to power a GTX 980 desktop graphics card connected to a laptop via a mini-PCIe to 1x PCIe adapter. The GTX980 was firmware underclocked and undervoltage to keep it below 80W at all times and it has been happily running 24/7 sitting in the lower half of a plastic toolbox I use to hold the card and laptop together. I'm glad in hindsight that I didn't attempt to fix early model PS3s with the YLOD.
I haven't found refurbishing electronics to be a good way to make money (and I stopped trying that a long time ago), but it's a great way to get useful hardware.
Amazing video, I recently got a PS3 FAT for around $75 USD, it's a CECHA01 from March 2007 and it doesn't seem to have any issues, but I was worried and had knowledge of the YLOD, was about to go and do preventing maintenance replacing the NEC/TOKIN capacitors when I saw this video while looking at all the possible causes, and it sure saved me from doing something stupid, new sub def, and amazing work !
I'm in the same boat. I'm going to crack mine open and airblast the dust out, then replace the thermal compound and pads but other than that I think I might just keep it as is.
I heard a PSU swap is also good? Any recommendation?
@@JonathanMarinaro 226. They run cooler.
Damn kudos to you man, my original phat one is long dead with a YLOD fix that failed a few weeks later... I bought 2 backup ones a few years ago for like 50 and 75$ as well before they started getting youtube popular. Also Sony not doing backwards compability is not helping to finding those together with the failure rate. I wish I had the balls of you to fix those capacitors, or how difficult is it? Is it reball difficult?
@@henrik1743 The capacitors can fail but as the video says is rarely the reason why they fail. Been servicing ps3s for a while now(not any more) but I can think of maybe 1 situation where it was a capacitor.
In most cases, through proper syscon diagnosis, its simply RSX failure. The real truth is, most RSX will fail. You can only take some preventative measures like doing everything possible to make the ps3 run cool.
Replacing thermal pads, delid+repaste and changing psu.
My advice, buy a slim ps3, jail break. Its simple and quick. You put in your ps2 disc and install it directly to the HDD. Its 85%+ Compatibility. When you find a non compatible game, bust out your PHAT ps3.
@@grizzlybearking1878 Hey man, thanks for dropping your knowledge and educating me on the issue. So you would say that if the unit has YLOD and a "fixed" YLOD it needs a reball (RSX failure = reball, right?).
Yeah I bought 2 PS3 slims of specific years and models to use jailbreak but then I never got the thumb out my ass, I just played skate 2 and 3 with my friends. I then noticed the disc loading very weirdly and then the blueray drive failed on me on my ps3 slim lmfao! So I will just keep my 2 working phats in the closet until I find someone that can dissesamble and take care of them, but it's super hard to find in the nordics where I live cause it's so niché and labour is super expensive here..
Like you say, some games aren't compatible and I learned that when using my Phat as well, when playing driv3r the missions would just fail in really weird ways and AI breaking pathing to make progress impossible.
So I have 2 PS2 slims I play on now, never ever had a PS2 slim fail, they are built as tanks.
I just started my own console repairing journey helping restore my and my friends consoles and cartridges. Your video captures my passion and obsession with this perfectly.
I cant wait to continue repairing.
It was definitely sad. Mine was bought around March 2007. It died in September of 2009. Luckily by then they were replacing them for free. In my case, I had bought it in France but moved to Spain in summer 2007. So I tried explaining and after enough time (and money, as it cost to call them), I agreed to a refurbished 80GB as a 60GB replacement would take 5-6 months according to them. Another year warranty though. They said 2 months for the 80GB. It took 5 days and it turned out to be brand new, never opened. I felt so lucky but wondered if I should've said 60GB instead. Maybe it would've been refurbished and would've died again anyway.
Eventually in 2011 I bought a Slim. I still have both consoles. In fact, I recently hacked my old 80GB with an upgraded 120GB SSD. It runs CFW and I'm able to download games directly from the consoles. From any region. DLC too. Only things ever released digitally on the store, unfortunately. But I can download everything else on a PC and transfer it with a USB drive. Easy. Also, I can play most PS2 games digitally or insert a PS2 disc and copy it over to play. I haven't tried running discs natively. I will soon. It's just so awesome with CFW. No need to seek an original launch model. My newer 80GB is fine.
This video is amazing!. Thank you very much, Felix. It should help debunk lots of myths that are (still) out there because of the outdated and misleading tutorials.
Just finished watching this. I have an A series PS3 that I bought when they first came out and for the past 8 years or so it has been sitting collecting dust due to the YLOD. There's no way in hell I'm smart or technical enough to try and fix it so buying a PS2 is likely what I'll end up doing. Thank you for all of your hard work with this.
It's odd I bought ps3 on launch day, and I never had a problem with it. I ain't played it I 5 years tho
I agree if you want to play ps2 games just get a ps2, I think all phat ps3's will brick sooner or later
@@aaronclay4665oh you will one day
That was a ride! Just reaching the end of my own journey.
Wow! Thank you so much.
Yeah, PS3 was an unexpected journey. Didn't think it was going to be so difficult, but it was/is fun.
I'm having to learn to work with SMD PCBs from a standpoint of coming from waneing days of wire-wrapping and breadboards made from wooden, well breadboards and germanium trannies to chips sans leads that have switching times in the GHz region @@ripfelix3020 . I just figured (recently) from watching Bogatin that copper pour causes more problems than it solves. And was taught - *always* cover the board in as much copper as possible... and so on.
But learning new stuff is great!!
Hands down the best video I've seen covering this issue. Great detail and information. Thank you.
This is the kind of in-depth analysis that the YLOD needed for a long time. At some point I started believing into the capacitor failure narrative, but it honestly always sounded too good to be true. Even if this video doesn't ultimately give a definitive solution to the problem (which is often hard to do for complex problems...) it surely is a new starting point for discussion, free from all the old myths.
Personally I own a jailbroken slim PS3 (CECH-2004) that I have since 2012 and it's pretty much on par with a retrocompatible fat model, minus the style points. You can easily play any PS2 ISOs on it thanks to CFW, don't know if it's possible to load discs now but IIRC it wasn't possible when the PS2 compatibility was first made available. If you want to get a PS3 just for that, I recommend that you go for a slim model and jailbreak it, which is much easier to do now than 10 years ago. Maybe try to avoid any 65nm RSX, but if you have no choice, with CFW you can also set custom fan curves very easily, and make sure that your console will always stay below 70°C... though maybe at the small price of insane noise levels when the fans hit max speed.
You can only play discs if you back them up first on non-BC models
wish this gets more exposure as it deserves it
I've watched this like five times in the past year because it's just so good. The PS3 is my favorite piece of technology ever created. From a gaming perspective, media consumption perspective, and tinkering perspective. It's incredible with a very rich history. Thank you for making this video.
I have quite a lot of knoleadge about electronics, but WOW, the amount of work and research you've managed to put in a single 90 min video is mindblowing and proves you are a profesional. Seriously, congrats, this is one of the best and most detailed videos I've seen about electronics.
I've waited so long for someone to give out more detailed information on this. Thanks alot, much respect
I don't own or never bought a console, but this video was fascinating to watch. The story, content and editing is so professional. Brilliant.
I love those videos. It makes you realize how much goes into something. Like a universe in a small space.
I know a lot about life experiences and I have big respect for yours. Good job. This might just be a comment, but me personally send my regards. Great dude.
Received and apreciated. Thank you!
Thank you for making this "movie"! Great entertainment value, but even more a wealth of knowledge. I have 3 Phats that I need to repair. Now I can move forward on making my own Franky's.
Fantastic job presenting the information Felix. A very well done video.
Your guest appearance in here was immaculate.
lmao
Even this console ,and footage looks real life ,and it's amazing to think things have moved on and got even better since this which is amazing
Ouch... My brain hurts😵💫 I am definitely one of those out there that are passionate about this console. I have a CECHA01 that was "refurbished" and a year later went YLOD on me... But this video has given me hope! Thank you for all your dedication towards this project!
Those beeping sound still haunting me to these day, everytime I hear it my heart jump a little bit.
This was an outstanding watch, who would have known that such a "simple" question has such an involving answer. I still miss my OG fat every time i remember i used to have one (it died so long ago now it feels like a different lifetime lmao) and it's nice to finally have some clarity on what went wrong with it at least. Fantastic effort for this video, I'm glad I saw it and I wish you the best in the future
Thank You to the modding and repair community for all your work in keeping the PS 3 phat "ALIVE" and well .. Well Done !!!
I've been a proud PS3 owner since 2008, right before I started my 8th grade class, and 15 years later, I STILL have it, and it still works fine even after all this time. Never had the YLOD event myself ( I didn't even KNOW the PS3 had a yellow light period, lol), so seeing this informative video is definitely well-made
This is way better than I expected it to be...
My dad still has his fat PS3 (CECHE01) and I hope to fix it after my dad stored his in the shed many years ago. With your video, I feel confident enough I can at least for now try and do a diagnostic and find the root cause. You’ve just gained a new subscriber, loved to see more of your videos.
I was just about to comment about it being a problem of the time and you’ve gone on to explain this and dissect the issue perfectly. I used to be a repair guy, I’ve also owned lots of devices from this era. nVidia had huge problems with the 8600m gt which caused these same problems with the 2007 MacBook Pro. I had one, it died in two weeks. The Xbox 360, ps3 and this gpu were all defective and all released around the same time. I’m sticking with the conclusion that you should just avoid tech produced during this time due to lots of known manufacturing defects at large scale operations. Thanks for breaking this down even further!
Neeeeeerd!!
Jokes aside, this is incredible. I'm 20 minutes into the video and hooked. The info, the humor, and the presentation is a 10/10 man. I'm looking forward to going through your other stuff. 🤙
this so far has been the most detailed video I've seen about the notorious YLOD, thank you for the information you have discovered over these last years and the Frankenstein mod information given has for me been particularly useful. i've known the the basics of what it is and why it's useful but i didn't know you can't simply(not simply) transplant a newer rsx and have it work right away.
Wasn’t expecting to watch this full video, but I did. Lol. Even though I do not have a PS3 to fix, I enjoyed learning and being exposed to some engineering. Thank you!
Amazing. What a video. I think you will have over 100'000 subscribers in one year. By the way, I still have my 60gb fat PS3, never experience the yellow light. I know they were getting expensive, but now is getting crazy. Last year I play games on it like always. And during covid was the first time I opened it for cleaning, thermal paste change and hard disc update. Its amazing.
As a massive fan of video essays, this channel is so underrated. You deserve more viewers, man!
Damn that was a trip.
The references, time-, storyline, the knowledge and fact drops and especially the music.
Recently got myself a CECHA00 (Japanese) fatty boi in pretty nice condition, warranty seal is still intact. I absolutely falled in love with that thing, one of the most beautiful, functional and all-in-one multimedia combine-machine that i ever had. Only one word: the Beast. With OFW, before i jailbroked it and installed 4.84 Rebug D-REX, it was absolutely quiet, even after playing hours of GTA 5 and The Last of US on it, fan speed barely rumped up a step or two.
Shortly after i installed CFW on console and swapped 60 GB HDD for 1 TB, immediately chaged fan settings to 60 C max in any condition, and to 50% fan constant while loading PS2 games. And even in GTA 5, console is easily managing to keep both CELL and RSX under 60, with fan speed max at around 45-50% after 12 hours of playing.
Also, i checked the Syscon errorlog via PS3 Toolset, and all 32 errors, through period of 2008 to 2016, was only bunch of A0801001's and A0801004's. I guess these are common, even in perfectly working consoles, and are related to inproper shutdowns (my console have 760 turns on and 726 turns off, so the 34 difference probably are inproper shutdowns), no worries here.
I don't plan to open up console really, even though if result will be much better with fresh thermal interfaces. Though it has only 68 days of total uptime, it wasn't used intensive, which is good. And i think the results with custom fan speed is pretty damn solid for never opened 17-years old console. My question is, will that sort of preventive maintenance be enough to keep that baby alive for as long as possible? Or still, regular heating and cooling cycles, even with temps under 60 C, will slowly kill of the RSX bumps? Will appreciate some more advices for that fantastic console.
P.S. Thanks for that insane good quality video and all the research that you are done in that topic, you did amazing job for the community of PS3.
//P.S.S. My english isn't that good and not native, so sorry if i did some mistakes in spelling and grammar.
I think you've done what you can. Enjoy the beast while it lasts! No need to worry. But I would reccomend dumping the ERK so if it does die you can decrypt the HDD and retrieve your saves/whatever else.
Sir, you are hero. It's impossible to underestimate the work done here. Though i'm not a PS3-fat hunter, I still was looking for good explanation on mid-2000s gpus crisis. I'm a laptop collector, and some interesting models suffered from this issue.
Thanks for the informative video.
I think it was Eisenstein that said something along the lines of “if you truly understand something then you can teach it”
That what this video is to me. Really well made.
I for one liked the Star Wars bits they fit really well. And you can tell this project met the world to you.
Ik you mentioned not being a engineer but sir. The way you think is Excatly what most engineers lack. That’s coming from a ChemE