Super_Slav I think you mean low power. And yeah, there was almost no power but you can’t deny that the cooling did the job adequately and the Wii didn’t overheat
I realize I am probably about 2 years late to the party here, but this is one of the most informative, well thought out and presented videos I have ever seen on the YLOD. Very interesting and I can say I have definitely learned alot here. Thanks!
I can't like this video enough. After fixing my 2010 Macbook Pro when they also figured out this was the issue, I question everyone saying reball is the answer to anything. People said the GPU was bad, when all it was is a single cap that can no longer deliver clean power that causes the GPU to crash when switching on and off.
Reballing is like reflowing for people who can charge you to do it. It's only the first thing to try because you don't know how to or don't want to bother to diagnose and fix it properly, and it's an easy thing to do that has a somewhat decent chance of working. IMO reflowing is only really makes sense if you are ready and willing to just buy a replacement of whatever is broken, and you wanna take a chance at saving that money you would have spent with minimal effort.
The resale value of YLOD PS3 jumps up significantly in the west in 3.2.1... No wonder why this seller on yahoo auction in Japan who sold so many used fat PS3 and I wonder why he charged them reasonable amount and none of them got YLOD... Guess them Japanese repairers got it figured out years before this video come out.
@@fss1704 Oh it makes sense, it makes quite a bit of sense. But just because it makes sense doesn't mean that it's true or that it's a predominant cause of failure rather than a fringe one.
@@SianaGearz what dowsn't make sense is the way of fixing that cracked chip, let's be serious here, you can reball and reflow a cpu/gpu /chipset. And yes early 2000's electronics had issues with multiple manufacturing proceses. but that was a easy way to swindle people out of their money and was quickly disproven by proper repair stores. Multiple motherboard chipsets could be temporary fixed with "reflow" and it was big buisness for computert repair shops in the past, but i never heard of reflowing a cpu, even a soldered bga style one in a pc or laptop, because those things were much smaller and used a diffrent technology of flip chip soldering than low budhet, in comparacy motherboard choipsets. and they also suffered much higher thermal abuse. it makes much more sense for sony to use that prosess on their parts, then again amd and nvidia had their share of problems with gpu failure themeselves, amd or ati at the time was an early adopter of new production node while nvidia lagged a bit behind.and had bigger failure rates. i seen ugly repaired ps3's with capacitors dongling outside, working! fat, slim, middle models. and in many cases power suply was the problem or those caps, but i never tryed to reflow or replace the gpu or cpu. what i said to friends who tryed to make me reflow those was i don't have the equipment to rebal the thing and even if i had i could do more harm than good by doing that. and we jist scoped power rails, then cpu caps and everything was clear. I didn't take money for those repairs because i am not a shop, i didn't take outside of friend zone jobs either , just fun bits. and in my case we put multiple smaller caps just to balpark mach capacity of those things, often on top of oryginal ones
@@kokodin5895 the good old nvidia bug which killed many laptops with 2008 nvidia graphics chipsets. Indeed a very interesting topic. CPUs almost never die. However with graphics chips it is the opposite: the nv bug wasn't the only issue with mass defective GPUs. AMDs HD6xxx series had a similar issue (most commonly known as the Macbook Pro 2011 issue, but also many Radeon HD 6870 cards had a very short life expectancy). These are only two of those issues. Makes me wonder why especially graphics chipsets have those issues. Maybe because they run hotter. But modern laptop CPUs are TOASTING themselves (for example the i5, not even the highest option, in my Thinkpad L390, constantly hits 100°C, from the day it came out of the factory) and yet still they don't die. And no, my laptop wouldn't profit that much from a repaste, this is how those newer Intel ULV quadcore mobile CPUs work. They intentionally have a much higher power output than the cooling system can handle, and only throttle after a very high temp is reached. And in comparison to GPU dies they seem to withstand those temps for years.
@@TheRailroad99 GPUs have a much higher transistor density, so that may play a factor. Also, much of the die space in a CPU is cache which uses far less power than a floating point unit, for example. CPUs have had thermal probes in the hottest areas of the chip so they can be fairly certain about how much thermal headroom they have. Older GPUs however, had less accurate means of measuring temperatures so an nvidia 8600gt reporting 90c temperatures is not at all comparable to an Intel core i7 9700k reporting 90c. Newer GPUs like AMDs 5700xt have dozens of thermal probes spread out along the die and are able to give "hotspot" temperatures(I.e. "CPU" style) as well as "edge" temperatures("GPU" style). A GPU reporting 90c edge temperatures can be experiencing over 110c at the hotspots. Regarding your laptop, as undersized as the cooling system may be, you can sometimes significantly improve performance by undervolting the cpu and adding a small copper shim to increase contact with the die. My HP probook 840 g2 suffered from poor contact yielding 90c temperatures at stock speeds with throttling after just 10 seconds. Now it never crosses 80c despite holding its max turbo speed for 4 times longer and maintaining clocks 180mhz higher afterwards.
Great video man! I was 15 when I got my first PS3 (a refurbished CECHA01), and I was absolutely devastated when it got the infamous YLOD. Had it taken to a repair shop to have it reflowed because I didn't know anything about electronics, broke again a month later. Then my cousin showed me how to take it apart and we reflowed it, since it was the only fix we knew of. It felt great having a solution (if only a temporary one) and it always bugged me that there wasn't a more permanent fix, but again I had very little experience with electronics and motherboard repair at the time. Seeing this video made me both super happy and incredibly infuriated. Happy to know that there is all this new information (especially now that I've bought a multimeter and have been slowly learning motherboard diagnosis and repair), infuriated because I'm seeing all this too late and I already threw out both of my OG backwards compatible PS3's since I couldn't bring them back to life from the reflowing repair anymore. If I had them today, they would have become the perfect practice boards for me to probe with my multimeter and hopefully bring back to life. That being said, I really hope more people with their broken PS3's see this video before they decide to toss them out or anything like that. And it makes me really happy to know that with all this info, some common sense, and some elbow grease, we can still save many of these consoles from going to waste and give them a new home with loving owners!
Yep, it’s been discovered very recently that almost all YLOD launch PS3s can be fixed by replacing the NEC TOKIN capacitors, and the reflow/reball fix worked by coincidence.
As a technician myself (30 years) this makes perfect sense and when they mentioned "NEC" I face palmed hard!! Cheap and poorly engineered caps killed many a Turbografx 16, Turbo Duo, and Turbo Express. I never understood what it was with NEC and caps? I know they go for cost cutting but I've repaired my NEC consoles with simple capacitor kits. NEC never learned from their mistakes in the 90s. *SMH*
@@anjratn141 No, it's hard to describe in this forum but you need to take a slow and methodical approach. There are many TH-cam videos on most vintage and modern consoles that will guide you through the process of opening, testing, diagnosing, and possible repair. I stress the word POSSIBLE, many do not have the proper equipment or expertise. So please, if you are unsure of your skills or your not sure if the problem is major, get your machine to someone who is qualified to fix it. If you feel comfortable working on your machine, check out the TH-cam video on your console.
@@deathstrike thanks mate for answering I don't trust any of them since I watching all of them and reflecting people respons, but you didn't answer my primary question is first thing on this mysterious issue to check the capacitor or go straight to gpu fixing problems, sorry for my cheap English I'm still learning
Anjra Tn As with any troubleshooting, do the simplest thing first. Replacing a couple of faulty capacitors, while not the easiest task, is definitely easier and cheaper than reflowing or reballing. If your PS3 YLOD’s, it wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
Dreamcast random reset -> The internet : "Reflow the pins of the PSU or bend them !!!!" Everyone : "Ok, I'll do that and spread my new knowledge !" Open a DC and tell me those pins "disconnect themselves" at random while you're playing... Geeee, the amount of fake knowledge out there is beyond belief sometimes. Real solution : Remove the dust (basically free the exhaust of eventual dust), clean the fan, MAKE SURE the fan spins (if not, reflow the 3 pins of the fan's connector on the daughter board) and more importantly : change the thermal pads (with 1.5mm thick ones). That's it, problem solved !
I believe that the random reset on the Dreamcast can only be caused on the PSU side if you unplug and replug it on the Motherboard multiple times. And because the pins are not designed for that multiple unplugging and replugging you're gonna run into a potential random reset issue or the console not wanting to boot at all and you have to find a fix for it.
@BaeCityAnri BaeCityAnri In my case pin 1 that outputs 3.3V was dirty or perhaps even worse than that which caused my VA1 Dreamcast to not boot. Cleaning it with IPA helped but only temporarly because soon after thta I would get random resets. Lately I had to put the PSU slightly higher for it to work. Though now I'm getting a different motherboard (also VA1) for my Dreamcast because of screwed up a mod on that one. One more thing: Having a Dreamcast that the GD-Rom drive doesn't do anything can be associated with the bad PSU connection particularly on the pin 6 that outputs 12V.
@BaeCityAnri @Daniel Black (Hey Alex !) Corroded pins causing random resets, that I would believe. Not booting at all, that would make sense. But we're talking 0.x% of Dreamcast here. The thing is, people seem to have "fixed" the issue by doing something to these pins, I have a theory on this : While doing it, they've applied some pressure onto the top metal shielding / Heat sink which is what, IMO, actually did something (added to the fact that they've probably cleaned the console while they were at it). I wouldn't be surprised that the issue is a combination of 2 things : The thermal pad getting thinner and the heat sink losing contact with the thermal pad (because of the heat, the metal expanded) Therefore, there was air between the thermal pad and the heat sink, air being one of the most efficient insulation, there was an overheating issue. Out of the 50+ I've taken care of this year, only 2 had a reboot issue. One was due to cold solder joints of the fan connector and the other was a console sent to me by someone telling me random reset was the issue I needed to look into. I cleaned those pins with IPA (I always do, it doesn't cost me anything but at no point I told myself this was part of the fix, plus, they were in good shape), all I did was a cleaning and replaced the pads. It was months ago, no news from the customer so... "no news is good news" like we say in France ! Daniel, "Having a Dreamcast that the GD-Rom drive doesn't do anything can be associated with the bad PSU connection particularly on the pin 6 that outputs 12V." When you have issues with the GDrom, check the GDrom connector itself first, it's very unreliable. For instance (and this is an issue very poorly documented), if your DC hangs on the boot screen for 2 minutes, it just a bad connection between the MB and the GDrom assembly. Unplug, replug and it should work fine. I'm not saying there wasn't an issue with your PSU on this one. But maybe you've disassembled it, checked everything, saw something with the 6th pin (let's say, you cleaned it) put everything back together and the GDrom was working again so you told yourself it had to be that 6th pin. It could have just been a bad connection between the MB and GDrom drive, that you fix without noticing.
@@SLRModShop Yeah... I personally only ever had one Dreamcast so my own experience on this is very (!) limited. And I had a conversation with one guy who does console repairs and he said that most Dreamcast he got had a bad PSU connection. And I saw one video years ago about a Dreamcast not reading discs where the GD-Rom Drive didn't do anything and the guy just added solder to the pins to be thicker and then it started to read again. And he didn't even clean or remove and reinsert the GD-Rom drive! In any case, I'll think about chnaging my procedure when doing repairs like these. In general we need to inform ourselves from people who repair these about their experience. Thanks for the info! And... Sorry for the late answer...I wasn't pinged and I didn't check myself if someone responded until now.
@@danielblack6529 No worry, I'm making a huge repair guide that I will share online once it's finished. If you're interested, follow me on Twitter @vvJerome (I'm not trying to gain followers, you can unfollow me as soon as I release it). Today, I've found the RF eye pattern of the laser, you can check online, the info isn't there, trust me... So, you can expect a very thorough guide. I will also share it first with trusted modders so they can correct or add stuff before it goes online, my goal is to create the Bible of Dreamcast repairing.
This reminds me a lot of the GPU switching issues with 2010-2013 MacBook Pros. Everyone thought it was the lead-free solder on the Nvidia GPUs, but it was the capacitor feeding the GPU that caused the issue. But because it was right beside the GPU, everyone heating up the board would reheat the capacitor and “fix” their boards.
@@lobsterbark I’ve noticed people on the internet say all sorts of stupid shit because they know they won’t be held accountable but in the real world they’re silent little pussies because they know there’s a good chance they’ll get the shit beat out of them.
Nice video. I just heard about these new findings and found this video upon research. My launch 60GB ($600) PS3 got YLOD and has been sitting in my closet since 2010 because I didn't want to do any of the suggested fixes. It was either "reflow" or "reball" from everyone I spoke to. EVERYONE. Reflow always seemed janky to me and it wasn't worth it for a 3 day fix. Reball seemed just as janky but it was much more expensive with just as few guarantees. I'm glad I held out as I'll be trying my own capacitor replacement to see if that works. I'm glad some other viable possibility for fixing has been found as the entire "it's all on lead-free solder" just never made total sense, not for ALL YLOD issues. I'm an amateur repair enthusiast and even I know the PS3 tops out at about 90c. 90c won't affect the solder balls usually. It just never made sense to me. I always thought that: A - The Cell CPU and RSX are complete dogshit or B - Something else is going on. I didn't know what but something else. Based on my quick research I'm finding most fix their previously unfixable console via capacitor replacement.
@@RomeGoLARGE I'm going to. These mass produced devices (consoles, GPU's, etc) are notorious for having garbage thermal paste. I'm not going to de-lid or anything but the paste on the IHS is absolutely getting removed and replaced.
This is the absolute best, most concise explanation of the YLOD phenomena. My PS3 first generation 60 gig worked for 14 years until died two months ago.
I ended up throwing out mine in 2015 after about a half year trying to get it fixed. Lost 6000 songs, 30 music vids, and about 200 pics I had on it 😢. Wish this video was posted then I miss it to this day, the one true regret I have
I think the heaviest problem with the PS3 is error coding. Most of the problems would display the yellow light, instead of a coded beep sequence or semilar.
Just tried this theory of heating the nec tokin of a cech2001a ps3 slim ylod (bought off Craigslist for next to nothing has factory warranty seal cleaned and untouched/scratched)on to the repairs I blocked off the rsx with kapton tape heat the Capacitors at 300c for 1min each side reinstalled everything together and it worked as it should. Just wanna leave a comment saying yes it worked for "me but for anyone eles who know right?
@Arnold101Knight I have already replaced my cap to tantalum caps from a dead cech3xxx board. I believe these nec tokin act iffy because of heat and solder making microscopic cracks plus have you seen these thing melt/shatter when people attempt to remove them carefully
@Arnold101Knight the heat seems to cause the cracks to connect temporariliy. Which is why it's not a Perm Fix like replacing them are. :) It could also be the heat Charging the Caps but idk if thats as likely lol
In the middle of learning how to solder so I can replace the NEC Tokin capacitors. Even removing them seems difficult and there isn't a guide in English on the TH-cam's yet. My CECHA01 and CECHC03 will survive.
I used a cheap heat gun off of Amazon, put it to 400 degrees took roughly 15-20 seconds came right off. Plastic did melt a tad but was no issue. I fixed my 40gb ps3 with this method
I had two sony 60gb phats die. One that Sony “fixed” and one “fixed” by an ebay person who used real lead. I temporarily fixed it and got as much as I could im trade-in. Wish I still had it.
Hey, also the PS3 heatsinks have an issue as well. They have too much vertical space below the motherboard and ultimately PULL on the GPU AND CPU hard. The thermal paste bond between the IHS and Heatsink + gravity lets the heatsink tug on the RSX and CELL IH and pull it down. This physical force ultimately stresses the solder balls. I strongly believe this breaks connections whenever the RSX or CELL heats up. When these things get hot, the solder almost flows but slowly. (it'd take alot of thermal cycles) For my PS3 with the infamous GLOD, the screen started to artifact and a small sparkgap noise came out of the console whenever the RSX hit 75C. It hardlocked immediately after. This tells me some solder balls that deliver high current to the chip disconnected and caused a hardware error. (This caused a GLOD for me occasionally + interminent artifacting) I flipped the ps3 upside down so the heatsinks (because of their weight+gravity) push the chips onto the motherboard. (just like what the coin method fix for GLOD tried to achieve) AND MY THEORY WAS RIGHT! IT NOW WORKS SMOOTHLY! Its been 6 months of constant usage and 0 noises, 0 artifacts, 0 freezing, 0 problems and played through a bunch of games at 68C. It seems like every aspect of the PS3 was fucked to begin with. 😅
Exactly. It's unbelievable how the design- and all the inherent flaws in it- were approved. The only explanation is that they felt pressure to rush out Playstation V3 (PS3) w/o an intensive several-thousand-hour testing period on 100 machines. If several thousand hours seems extensive, consider that a new console buyer would easily average a minimum 2 hours/day. Let's say average over1000 hours year.
I have a launch PS3 that hasn't experienced the YLOD yet. I want to open it up, clean it out, add new thermal paste and new thermal pads to replace the old originals. Is there anything else you can recommend to do to keep an early PS3 alive and well in the long term? Something that doesn't require extremely difficult soldering? Would you be willing to make a video series on maintaining game consoles for the long term? I'd watch all of them.
God, yes. THAT. I previously got a YLOD PS3 that didn't behave like a problem with the soldering. But no matter where I asked and how I asked, they just told me "reball it!!". I did reball it. It didn't change a thing. I ended up breaking the motherboard after too many reopening and testing... Damn I hate those fake common knowledge.
For anyone that is truly interested in electronics repair i highly recommend some folks like Louis Rossmann video as he goes from diagnose to repair electronics demonstrations to get an idea of what your really getting into.
itz just a money thing, thats it, i knew that when the first said back in 2006-7 that it isnt what they sayin ^^ ;) as a PC guy we all a step above all other, thats a good thing :)
I personally had the luck and neither a „Red Ring of Death“ nor a „Yellow Light of Death“, but friends of me bought at least 2 Xbox 360s each. One to play games, one to send to Microsoft.
It reminds me of a job I had during college. A lot of computers on campus would fail due to bad caps on the motherboard. I spent a lot of time replacing them. At least it was easy to find on those motherboards as the caps would swell up.
Interesting video, never knew those capacitors were an issue! I've heard about the thermal paste under the IHS drying out over time, causing the system to run hotter than it should or shut down after a few minutes (this failure mode happened to my CECHG unit), and that nVidia GPUs in many laptops from the period the PS3 launched, between 2006-2008, had bad underfill processes causing them to fail, but this is new to me. At least the 360 has a secondary error code with its RROD to narrow the problem down - on PS3 you are just guessing.
I know this show you are referring to I think it was Watchdog here in the UK or another consumer related show. They were fixing the PS3's in the back of what looked like a truck and did say that some of them had stopped working again since the repair
Great video.... explained perfectly. Could you do a video explaining how to diagnose each fault on the board? It would be awesome to see "Ok here's what we think is the problem"... and "Here's how you know!".....
@@maytizevb yep, I think the 25xx and 3xxx Slims uses tantalums and also the 4xxx series. Since this models doesnt suffer that much on YLOD, instead most of them experience we call blackout issue.
Check out the PS3 "eraser" mod. I did it and my PS3 temps dropped 10C. This fix shows that earlier models of the PS3 simply didn't have enough mounting pressure for the CPU heatsink to stay cool. This isn't a sketchy mod either. It's just recreating what Sony did in later models that included a plastic cover for the CPU hole that increases mounting pressure. Additionally adding CFW to your PS3 shows that Sony prefers running your consoles hot all the time in favor of low fan noise. My early model PS3 idled at 80C before the mod and the fans were sitting at less than 20%. To put that into perspective PS3s have an emergency shut off at 85C due to high heat. That is very little headroom and running the consoles that hot all the time is bound to lead to issues. The CFW has custom fan controls which I'll be using from now on so it doesn't die an early death. Fans aren't even much louder if you repaste and do the eraser mod.
Yup, i knew solder crack wasn't the primary issue, because some people also get YLOD after their PS3 wasn't played for a long time (stored in the box in a clean and dry place for years), and then they want to play some PS3 games, they turn on their PS3 and suddenly YLOD, last time the PS3 works perfectly. That's why some retailer said "even if you're not playing your PS3 anymore, it's recommended to turn on your PS3 at least once a week for 30 minutes"
Man thanks for the info. I did not realize those were caps and how faulty they are. Sadly I already got rid of my PS3 Fat and moved to a slim. For those that still have a fat, could you provide a link to the replacement caps you mentioned in the video?
I tear down, deep clean and repaste all my consoles at least once every 2 years, true cooling maintenance isnt everything but it goes a heck of a long way 🦊💜
Great scientific analysis. I repaired a friend's PS3 several times by "home-reflowing" the board on my electric frying pan. My thought process was the same as yours, I had assumed it was "some" solder joint or other component which liked being heated up again, but I wasn't assuming I was reflowing the CPU or GPU or anything targeted like that. As you say, it's a very heavy hammer of a fix. So heavy I was actually concerned with surface mount components falling off the underside of the board if I heated too much!
Backside components are attached with epoxy, which is usually dyed red. They first populate the backside, and during reflow, the epoxy sets, and then the main component side. If they could fall off, they would have fallen off while main component side was reflowed during manufacture.
awesome video so clear and easy to follow along! thank you for your time in taking to make this video. i have a ps3 ylod and it sits sadly on my shelf reminding me how much fun i had with it.
The issue with diagnosis is that the YLOD is so vague that it can be literally anything. Simple component came loose, NEC caps, overheating, or (in my case) the bga failed on either the rsx and/or the cell-be. Because most lacked the knowledge to read the syscon, the misdiagnosis happened and continues to happen.
The bump issue with the bad underfill was very common. I just have to say two words: "nvidia bug" But I think many chips in this transition period had similar issues, it took a while for the chip fabs to adopt to lead free solder. A reball can sometimes be a fix, for example in a lot of AVRs from 2008-2015. All used texas instruments DSP chips. However some of those DSPs (I think chip date 2011-2012) had defective bumps as well. The failure was the same. The fix of reballing fixed most of them, but some died again. Those with the dead chip. If you have one of them, just replace the chip with the newer version that does not fail. (Even with the good chip, add a heatsink, otherwise the solderballs below can crack)
Good thing people figured out how to use the SYSCON diagnosis software right around the time this video came out, enabling them to make a proper diagnosis.
Hell yeah, finally someone can back this "theory" up. I have been telling numerous people to not reflow anything, it's those NEC/TOKIN capacitors causing issues. Reflow is the only solution when the GPU is damaged to the point it's artifacting, but you are going to replace the RSX all together then.. That's the only point you really need to touch those solder balls. PCB on PS3 is very thick and solder does not melt that the temperature the PS3 is capable of outputting
Don't question, just open one of this caps and you will see the fucking black blob of melted tantalum in the middle of the capacitor, then you show this to your friend and solder new capacitors.
Todays consoles have an extremely high thermal mass to prevent overheating during those extended gaming sessions. But I wouldn't recommend a GPU reflow either. Getting the board up to temp. requires a ton of heat and a ton of air flow, making it difficult to be precise, especially if you're using a hot air gun. You're more likely to bridge the solder balls rather than get them to resolidify in place. Plus you increase the likelihood of damaging something else.
@@StaticVapour590 That what I said. They are more likely to damage the unit, indiscriminately blasting heat across the board. We offer repair, recovery or restoration of data damage for Apple products with circuit damage. And one of the things we see most often are boards people simply BLASTED with heat, in a hail Mary attempt to fix it. So when I see people giving out that TERRIBLE advise, I have to say something. Save the next guy from wasting his time on a roached board.
There was a massive problem with all sorts of semi conductors that used lead free ball grid array solder joints. It affected everything that used them at the time, even desktop GPUs. There are many studies of it. Lead free solder required more than 2x the temperature of 40% lead solder to fully turn to liquid and reharden correctly. This also hit around the time of the great capacitor plague where the world market was flooded with a stolen unfinished capacitor substrate formula that caused premature failure of electrolytic caps. It was a terrible time for reliability of every electronic device.
I recently bought a CECH-A01, from what I can tell it’s never been opened. Had a ton of dust balls (actual balls) inside the machine that I could see without opening it, all around inside it. There is a heating issue after the system being on for 20-30 mins. I can hear the fans get louder. Doesn’t sound like 100% speed. My question is, since it is an old console should I put new thermal paste under the IHS for the RSX and the CPU? I would get it professionally done of course. And does anyone know someone who does it in the US? Currently I just see someone on eBay I might use.
Professionally done? I am a "Professional" at that and I've done it maybe 3 times. It's not hard. Have more respect for your own capabilities. Or don't, whatever.
I don't know crap about PS3s, but if they're anything like general purpose computers thermal paste is fairly simple. Clean out the dust and see if it does any better. If it does, problem solved!
nexxusty yeah I’ve decided to do it myself. Bought a trash fat console for $20 just to make sure I don’t have an issue on the one I actually care about.
cachemist the Heat spreaders (IHS) are glued down with silicon. So it’s a little more complicated than just replacing thermal paste. Basically it’s like delidding your CPU.
@@Evil_Chronic NSC Modz here on youtube has developed a method to de-lid these which is borne from his intense work on untold number of PS3's. (Check out his videos.) He's a somewhat wacky, extremely talkative, nice guy in Germany. His videos go on too long but are instructive. He has multiple ones on the IHS, and how easy it is to *destroy them* w/o patience, proper technique, and proper tools, and he shows you how to do it, and extended videos on proper re-pasting of the whole shebang.
You got a new sub friend, fantastic video, thank you! Also the very first time I've heard yld and the NEC capacitor as a probable cause, its nearly always blamed on the solder or reballing.
_"... but hopefully understandable."_ THANK YOU for demystifying such an integral part of our devices. In 2000 I built my own computer and since then I've tinkered with lots of hardware. In all that time, I've never encountered even this simple an explanation of a CPU. It's been the equivalent of "I'll do carpentry but call an electrician." Now I feel much more confident about where to start when I want or need to learn more. 👏✌️🍍
Incidentally it's interesting that both my 60GB and 80GB PS3s (fairly early models) AND 2 Toshiba laptops from that era have never suffered from power problems like this. (They have had their problems, sure. But things like hard impact, immersion, infection, corrupt RAM, and drive failure were never a _result of_ issues described in this video! 😁🍍)
I thought it was widely accepted/known that both the 360 and ps3 used thin and cheap silicon for the motherboards. With the heat from them causing the board to flex too much which in turn broke the solder loose from the board.
Just looking into this as I'm thinking about reviving my phat PS3 60 GB. Loving how you keep an open mind and are not afraid to say that a lot of lore and solutions out there are just assumptions and people echoing. The hard part: guess I'll have to learn how to properly diagnose mine before decide what cause the YLOD on mine. Cheers mate!
You failed to talk about the other major problem with the Yellow Light of Death... Bad Blu Ray Laser Modules... I used to repair PS3's through eBay at a rate of about 10 to 20 a week in 2008 and 2009.. This was a major problem that was easily fixable by getting a Japanese made laser module vs the factory provided Chinese part.
Yes. There were also problems with power supplies going out - various revisions of the PSUs run hotter while others are more efficient, etc. My primary focus for this was the most generally accepted "assumption." One of my good friends that bought a PS3 not too long after I bought mine had the blu-ray drive go out on his system. Frustrating, for sure.
Would that really cuase a yellow light situation? The PS3 didn't actually need a funcitoning bluray drive to start or even to run games since it had an online store and all.
I love how you bring up the thing with the GameGear about the capacitor failure. Mine kinda works but not the speaker and quiet left audio on headphones, and screen requires a very long warmup
Great video thanks. What did Sony and Microsoft learn from the PS3 and 360 which has enabled PS4 and XBONE to be much more reliable? I have an original fat backwards compatible PS3 that still works! But the drive can be a little temperamental
Well one part of the FC-BGA improvement was the die shrink. Computers around this era that pushed for more raw power one way or another really put out a LOT of heat, and the industry started to focus more on multi-cores, CPU/GPU optimization and cooling. Consoles pulled in the reigns a bit concerning pushing forward with raw speed. That is better for a "longer short term" life of the consoles for sure. Microsoft straight up learned the hard way due to rushing production of the Xbox 360, and I am sure they said "let's never do THAT again" after paying billions to right the wrong.
@@DisplacedGamers This generation of consoles actually puts out around the same amount of heat but in a smaller surface area now that they both use an APU.
I have the PS3 fat and experienced the Yellow Light of Death early on! Except, I have to press the power on button again, and again and then it starts to turn on finally 😂 I don't know why it does it, or even why it works, but it still does. Lol!
I used to repair PS3 YLOD's, we never touched the cooling (other than a re-paste, due to often drying out), and never reflowed anything... What we used to do, was... A full clean of the system, Then place it in a warm/hot place for 24 hours (we had a cupboard we setup with thermal sheets internally, a thermostat and heater/cooler system to regulate, we used to keep it at around 50c internal temp) (this brings all components up to a thermal equilibrium, so any expansion/compression due to temperature differences is eliminated. After allowing to cool (in the same location, at a controlled speed) Then, we would perform a full reset of the system via safe/recovery mode. This worked on 8 out of 10, and the return rate was very low, and any that were returned were often a good 6+ months later, and often a different issue... Odd occasions we would replace capacitors or voltage regulators, we would usually test components if a PS3 was returned. This wasn't my methodology, it was what I was told to do :)
Fixed well over 1000 PS3s with my custom reflow technique when I was in business here in Australia, my warranty was 6 months, I had a return rate of less than 5% and I made $1000s of dollars. My tool was a $25 heat gun, but my technique was what made the difference. The problem I believe was isolated to the CPU and GPU area, the rest of the board I kept cool during the reflow and the process only took 8 mins, which includes the warm up and the cool down process as well. Nice video.
Kills me how no one states most consoles that got YLOD weren’t treated or ventilated well enough. Everyone forgets technology needs a proper environment.
Mine got YLOD after left unused in the past 2 years, it worked flawlessly up until then and that's why I'm blaming it on the loss of capacitance over time of these NEC-Tokin capacitors.
I used to work at a console repair shop during the height of the RRoD and YLoD occurrences. We would reflow the PS3 motherboard in reflow oven with only the 2 chips exposed and it would fix it 9 out of 10 times, and we would rarely get returns. And the 1 out of 10 times the reflow wouldn't work, reballing would usually do the trick. We must've done hundreds if not thousands of PS3's during that time. I'm not disputing what you claim, but I thought I'd share my experiences with it.
@@Clay3613 HDD was almost always fine after a successful reflow/reball. I've only really seen a few cases when that happens, and it's because the HDD itself went bad.
@@odd4189 Well, I suppose I can't account for those. But among the people I knew who I've repaired their PS3, I saw only a couple fail again, and that was maybe a year or more later.
Funny you mention the Game Gear because it's well assumed in the community that many LCDs are faulty, but it's often either caps or ripple on the power supply.
Good info - I just bought my 1st PS3 yesterday (phat BC model), & it seems to be in good condition & works well so far. Only really bought it for PS1/PS2 BC. I do plan to pull it apart & blow/clean out the dust & change the thermal past. Hopefully it will last me a while! :)
after more research in the PS3 repair community, the issue is still usually the RSX, not the NEC Tokin caps. There's a new modchip available that lets you swap RSX chips from a donor PS3 btw
I used to put my PS3 in a box and use a hair dryer at max temperature to fix my YLOD issue. The problem is that my PS3 would stop working again about every month or so. If applying heat to certain types capacitors while they're not supplying a voltage restores them to working order, then that would explain the issue that I was having with my PS3. Eventually it wouldn't turn on even if I used a hair dryer, so I guess either the capacitors failed or the heat from the hair dryer messed up another component. I still have it since it's the original 60 GB model with PS2 and PS1 backwards compatibility. Maybe I'll fix it for real someday.
After 4 years my PS3 finnaly gave up ive tried everything to fix it but it no longer can stay on for at least 5 seconds so all my old Minecraft worlds and game data is probably lost but idk what to do tbh
Minor correction: for BGA components with collapsing balls voids ARE acceptable as long as there is 30% or less voiding of ANY BALL in the X-RAY image area. Class 1,2,3 however For BGA connections with NONcollapsing balls voids are UNacceptable. Class 1,2,3
That being said while i agree that people shouldnt just assume the problem lies with the solder balls overheating definitly played a major factor in many ps3 deaths. Especially if you were unlucky enough to get one of those nichicon power supplies that has a name that starts with "Z" and then vomits the rest of its name. Had a friend who was gifted a 60 gig and she wanted me to work on it before she really started using it. It had one of those PSUs so i replaced it with an aps231 and replaced the cooling compound which was dry and bubbly. Probably saved the system from an expected and quick death.
When my Ps3 died from the yellow light, I remember temporarily fixing it by wrapping it in a towel and blasting a hair dryer on it for fifteen minutes It worked, but not for very long :P
My launch PS3 got a Yellow light about 5 years ago, unplugged it, turned it off and back on again and never saw it again. Assuming it may return one day.
The funniest thing about "assumptions" is that the xbox 360s issues had nothing to do with solder as well. They used some nickel alloy washers for the CPU heatsink (I believe, its been a long time now, just know that these washers were the culprit in 99% of RLOD) that would expand and contract as the console was thermal cycling (ie. playing a game and turning it off). This would eventually work the heatsink away from the CPU and cause the console to flag this via a sensor on the board that detected the loose HSF. You could do a series of button presses on the front of the console (shown to me by a M$ employee at the time, who also clued me in to the washer issue, and the internal statistics that it was the problem on almost 99% of the consoles they got sent) to get it to display an error code on the screen even while RRODing, and the code would tell you what got flagged and it was ALWAYS this. I used to repair these things in college and the fix always was to just tighten the HSF. I did hundreds, maybe even a thousand of these things for people while undercutting M$ cost to send it in which is why a lot of people used my service. Even in my medium sample size I never ran into a unit that was legitimately overheating or had a dead chip etc. The xbox never was "overheating" as everyone thought, or had issues with solder. This misconception sold a lot of fan-destroying 3rd party cooler accessories though! People would do reflows, removing the HSF in the process and reattaching, which made it LOOK like it worked when in fact all that was needed was a screwdriver. Introducing variables, as he was talking about. The "Xclamp" fix ALSO CALLED FOR REPLACING THE WASHERS lol. This is also the exact kind of problem that can develop during console development: consoles that are constantly being reassembled in testing, and with long term tests that aren't long enough for an issue like this to crop up before the users get it. (Exactly like these NEC caps) These long term tests also are generally leaving the console on for extremely long periods, which means the console never, or not often thermal cycled and therefore the washers didn't have enough cycles to expand and contract to finally dislodge the HSF. So I guess if you really want your original 360 to have a long life, turn it off as little as possible or just never use it, lol. The reason the turnaround was so fast on 360s that were sent in, is that M$ was simply doing the same thing I was and sending the unit back out. They would tighten the HSF again, and send it to some other poor chap with it being to guaranteed happen again after enough thermal cycling. They changed the washer material to one that didn't expand from the xbox 360 elite on, and magically the issues all went away! I actually bought an elite at this point and that thing never had an issue lol. People always think M$ was losing a ton of money (more like lost profit) on the 360 warranty/repairs after warranty but they just weren't, charging people 100-150 at the time to send it in and paying someone to tighten some screws, with it all not taking very long means they could crank these things out, and even make money if the console was out of warranty. I certainly was.... You don't think M$ would extend the warranty without a plan, right?
I've always just taken my PS3 apart and cleaned out the dust, and replaced the thermal paste. That has worked for me with multiple different PS3s. Unfortunately, the poor design of the PS3 means that no old fat model PS3 stays fixed for long, but I'm planning on modding my "old reliable" with more modern fans and the best quality thermal paste I can buy.
I gotta say while yes most ylods on smaller RSX ps3s are due to the nec tokins, the backwards compat ones actually usually also have RSX damage due to the spreader on the RSX being slightly flawed and from my experience it's best to replace both the rsx and the caps on the original backwards compatible ps3s
Those NEC Tokins were fine, though like any other capacitor they’ll naturally fail during their lifetime. The big problem is how unreliable the GPU was found in early models.
@@TheOnlyPedroGameplays Under normal circumstance, you shouldn’t need to replace the NEC Tokins in the first place unless they go bad. If they do go bad, then replacing them with brand new NEC Tokins should do or you may also choose to replace them with compatible capacitors like the Tantlaum ones. Either way, the NEC Tokins aren’t faulty as the general public once believed and you should be fine with just leaving them alone for now. As for the GPU, a good chunk of the 90nm batches will inherently fail and replacing them with either a 65nm or 40nm will do.
@@crazedlunatic43 okay, I’ll remember this if I get a PlayStation 3 FAT. My dad has a slim model, and I really respect its modest design and great reliability but the fat with backwards compatibility is functional and just very beautiful. PS3 was at the peak of Sony’s aesthetics, and so owning one of those might even be more worth it than a PS2 with fan+HDD and homebrew.
The problem is likely a result of the flip chip manufacturing flaw. Heard somewhere those die bindings get cracked due to heat. One, two, even 3 cracked binds wouldn't cause a problem, but the more cracked binds you have, the higher the failure rate of the system. I remember hearing some people diagnosed rsx (gpu) manufacturing flaw. Some poeple even took rsx from super slim models and put it on the backwards compatible ylod phat ps3. And the reason why blasting these parts with heat seems to "fix" the consoles is because something gets reflown, some ball bind that had cracks on the flip chip die starts making proper contact and it "works" again. All the things you mentioned have a high "faliure" rate, and to fix it you have to diagnose what failed out of all those things.
My two takeaways: 1. This is the first I've heard of this yellow light of death. I've heard of beeping and powering off, and a blue light with no other functionality. 2. Someone X-raying the board and declaring that air trapped in the board is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. I've worked on thousands of computers and accessories, and I've never even heard of such a thing. Circuit boards aren't stamped together, they're chemically etched layer by layer.
The issue with the 360 was due to the wrong lead free solder used. It would crack due to the heat generated by the CPU and GPU. That said there's something worse about lead free solder. Tin whiskers. The lead stops them from growing. Without lead they can grow. So eventually devices with lead free solder will fail due to tin whisker growth. And chips with more terminals will fail quicker as there's less space between the terminals.
my original fat 80gb ps3 just died. It lasted 11 years. It was sitting vertical and faced no problem at all until it randomly died 2 days ago. F for the yellow led of death. My ps2 still works though
come in to find out about an interesting topic, end up finding out how my laptop died
Feel for you.. RIP laptop
2011 MBP?
ZOTAC laptop probably or Seagate laptop
LuminumYT ツ zotac and seagate never made laptops
@@sozzll I was joking
So only the Wii had adequate cooling in the 7th generation
It had nothing to cool, it was super low voltage.
Super_Slav I think you mean low power. And yeah, there was almost no power but you can’t deny that the cooling did the job adequately and the Wii didn’t overheat
Syntheon I absolutely understand how underpowered the Wii was but I’m just saying that it’s cooling system was perfectly fine for the job.
And was still the worst console that generation also.
@Syntheon Yeah it definitely sold alot to retirement homes and soccer moms.
I realize I am probably about 2 years late to the party here, but this is one of the most informative, well thought out and presented videos I have ever seen on the YLOD. Very interesting and I can say I have definitely learned alot here. Thanks!
I can't like this video enough. After fixing my 2010 Macbook Pro when they also figured out this was the issue, I question everyone saying reball is the answer to anything. People said the GPU was bad, when all it was is a single cap that can no longer deliver clean power that causes the GPU to crash when switching on and off.
Reballing is like reflowing for people who can charge you to do it. It's only the first thing to try because you don't know how to or don't want to bother to diagnose and fix it properly, and it's an easy thing to do that has a somewhat decent chance of working.
IMO reflowing is only really makes sense if you are ready and willing to just buy a replacement of whatever is broken, and you wanna take a chance at saving that money you would have spent with minimal effort.
I think I have that same MacBook Pro that’s having that same problem, would you mind linking a repair guide for that capacitor?
@@proaxel7003 th-cam.com/video/DzcgT_fiVTA/w-d-xo.html
Rehot CPU bro
It's such a cheap and easy fix you'd think we'd default to this long before a reball/reflow.
The resale value of YLOD PS3 jumps up significantly in the west in 3.2.1...
No wonder why this seller on yahoo auction in Japan who sold so many used fat PS3 and I wonder why he charged them reasonable amount and none of them got YLOD...
Guess them Japanese repairers got it figured out years before this video come out.
who thought that a mere NEC Tokin is causing the issue.
Yeah, the cracked chip theory doesn't make sense to begin with.
@@fss1704 Oh it makes sense, it makes quite a bit of sense. But just because it makes sense doesn't mean that it's true or that it's a predominant cause of failure rather than a fringe one.
@@SianaGearz what dowsn't make sense is the way of fixing that cracked chip, let's be serious here, you can reball and reflow a cpu/gpu /chipset. And yes early 2000's electronics had issues with multiple manufacturing proceses. but that was a easy way to swindle people out of their money and was quickly disproven by proper repair stores. Multiple motherboard chipsets could be temporary fixed with "reflow" and it was big buisness for computert repair shops in the past, but i never heard of reflowing a cpu, even a soldered bga style one in a pc or laptop, because those things were much smaller and used a diffrent technology of flip chip soldering than low budhet, in comparacy motherboard choipsets. and they also suffered much higher thermal abuse. it makes much more sense for sony to use that prosess on their parts, then again amd and nvidia had their share of problems with gpu failure themeselves, amd or ati at the time was an early adopter of new production node while nvidia lagged a bit behind.and had bigger failure rates. i seen ugly repaired ps3's with capacitors dongling outside, working! fat, slim, middle models. and in many cases power suply was the problem or those caps, but i never tryed to reflow or replace the gpu or cpu. what i said to friends who tryed to make me reflow those was i don't have the equipment to rebal the thing and even if i had i could do more harm than good by doing that. and we jist scoped power rails, then cpu caps and everything was clear. I didn't take money for those repairs because i am not a shop, i didn't take outside of friend zone jobs either , just fun bits. and in my case we put multiple smaller caps just to balpark mach capacity of those things, often on top of oryginal ones
@@kokodin5895
the good old nvidia bug which killed many laptops with 2008 nvidia graphics chipsets.
Indeed a very interesting topic. CPUs almost never die. However with graphics chips it is the opposite: the nv bug wasn't the only issue with mass defective GPUs. AMDs HD6xxx series had a similar issue (most commonly known as the Macbook Pro 2011 issue, but also many Radeon HD 6870 cards had a very short life expectancy).
These are only two of those issues. Makes me wonder why especially graphics chipsets have those issues. Maybe because they run hotter. But modern laptop CPUs are TOASTING themselves (for example the i5, not even the highest option, in my Thinkpad L390, constantly hits 100°C, from the day it came out of the factory) and yet still they don't die. And no, my laptop wouldn't profit that much from a repaste, this is how those newer Intel ULV quadcore mobile CPUs work. They intentionally have a much higher power output than the cooling system can handle, and only throttle after a very high temp is reached. And in comparison to GPU dies they seem to withstand those temps for years.
@@TheRailroad99 GPUs have a much higher transistor density, so that may play a factor. Also, much of the die space in a CPU is cache which uses far less power than a floating point unit, for example. CPUs have had thermal probes in the hottest areas of the chip so they can be fairly certain about how much thermal headroom they have. Older GPUs however, had less accurate means of measuring temperatures so an nvidia 8600gt reporting 90c temperatures is not at all comparable to an Intel core i7 9700k reporting 90c. Newer GPUs like AMDs 5700xt have dozens of thermal probes spread out along the die and are able to give "hotspot" temperatures(I.e. "CPU" style) as well as "edge" temperatures("GPU" style). A GPU reporting 90c edge temperatures can be experiencing over 110c at the hotspots.
Regarding your laptop, as undersized as the cooling system may be, you can sometimes significantly improve performance by undervolting the cpu and adding a small copper shim to increase contact with the die. My HP probook 840 g2 suffered from poor contact yielding 90c temperatures at stock speeds with throttling after just 10 seconds. Now it never crosses 80c despite holding its max turbo speed for 4 times longer and maintaining clocks 180mhz higher afterwards.
Great video man! I was 15 when I got my first PS3 (a refurbished CECHA01), and I was absolutely devastated when it got the infamous YLOD. Had it taken to a repair shop to have it reflowed because I didn't know anything about electronics, broke again a month later. Then my cousin showed me how to take it apart and we reflowed it, since it was the only fix we knew of. It felt great having a solution (if only a temporary one) and it always bugged me that there wasn't a more permanent fix, but again I had very little experience with electronics and motherboard repair at the time.
Seeing this video made me both super happy and incredibly infuriated. Happy to know that there is all this new information (especially now that I've bought a multimeter and have been slowly learning motherboard diagnosis and repair), infuriated because I'm seeing all this too late and I already threw out both of my OG backwards compatible PS3's since I couldn't bring them back to life from the reflowing repair anymore. If I had them today, they would have become the perfect practice boards for me to probe with my multimeter and hopefully bring back to life.
That being said, I really hope more people with their broken PS3's see this video before they decide to toss them out or anything like that. And it makes me really happy to know that with all this info, some common sense, and some elbow grease, we can still save many of these consoles from going to waste and give them a new home with loving owners!
Yep, it’s been discovered very recently that almost all YLOD launch PS3s can be fixed by replacing the NEC TOKIN capacitors, and the reflow/reball fix worked by coincidence.
As a technician myself (30 years) this makes perfect sense and when they mentioned "NEC" I face palmed hard!! Cheap and poorly engineered caps killed many a Turbografx 16, Turbo Duo, and Turbo Express. I never understood what it was with NEC and caps? I know they go for cost cutting but I've repaired my NEC consoles with simple capacitor kits. NEC never learned from their mistakes in the 90s. *SMH*
@@deathstrike so first thing i should do IS to replace the capacitor? IS that the Hole case
@@anjratn141 No, it's hard to describe in this forum but you need to take a slow and methodical approach. There are many TH-cam videos on most vintage and modern consoles that will guide you through the process of opening, testing, diagnosing, and possible repair. I stress the word POSSIBLE, many do not have the proper equipment or expertise. So please, if you are unsure of your skills or your not sure if the problem is major, get your machine to someone who is qualified to fix it. If you feel comfortable working on your machine, check out the TH-cam video on your console.
@@deathstrike thanks mate for answering I don't trust any of them since I watching all of them and reflecting people respons, but you didn't answer my primary question is first thing on this mysterious issue to check the capacitor or go straight to gpu fixing problems, sorry for my cheap English I'm still learning
Anjra Tn As with any troubleshooting, do the simplest thing first. Replacing a couple of faulty capacitors, while not the easiest task, is definitely easier and cheaper than reflowing or reballing. If your PS3 YLOD’s, it wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
Dreamcast random reset -> The internet : "Reflow the pins of the PSU or bend them !!!!"
Everyone : "Ok, I'll do that and spread my new knowledge !"
Open a DC and tell me those pins "disconnect themselves" at random while you're playing... Geeee, the amount of fake knowledge out there is beyond belief sometimes.
Real solution : Remove the dust (basically free the exhaust of eventual dust), clean the fan, MAKE SURE the fan spins (if not, reflow the 3 pins of the fan's connector on the daughter board) and more importantly : change the thermal pads (with 1.5mm thick ones). That's it, problem solved !
I believe that the random reset on the Dreamcast can only be caused on the PSU side if you unplug and replug it on the Motherboard multiple times. And because the pins are not designed for that multiple unplugging and replugging you're gonna run into a potential random reset issue or the console not wanting to boot at all and you have to find a fix for it.
@BaeCityAnri BaeCityAnri In my case pin 1 that outputs 3.3V was dirty or perhaps even worse than that which caused my VA1 Dreamcast to not boot. Cleaning it with IPA helped but only temporarly because soon after thta I would get random resets. Lately I had to put the PSU slightly higher for it to work. Though now I'm getting a different motherboard (also VA1) for my Dreamcast because of screwed up a mod on that one.
One more thing: Having a Dreamcast that the GD-Rom drive doesn't do anything can be associated with the bad PSU connection particularly on the pin 6 that outputs 12V.
@BaeCityAnri @Daniel Black (Hey Alex !) Corroded pins causing random resets, that I would believe. Not booting at all, that would make sense. But we're talking 0.x% of Dreamcast here. The thing is, people seem to have "fixed" the issue by doing something to these pins, I have a theory on this : While doing it, they've applied some pressure onto the top metal shielding / Heat sink which is what, IMO, actually did something (added to the fact that they've probably cleaned the console while they were at it). I wouldn't be surprised that the issue is a combination of 2 things :
The thermal pad getting thinner and the heat sink losing contact with the thermal pad (because of the heat, the metal expanded)
Therefore, there was air between the thermal pad and the heat sink, air being one of the most efficient insulation, there was an overheating issue.
Out of the 50+ I've taken care of this year, only 2 had a reboot issue. One was due to cold solder joints of the fan connector and the other was a console sent to me by someone telling me random reset was the issue I needed to look into. I cleaned those pins with IPA (I always do, it doesn't cost me anything but at no point I told myself this was part of the fix, plus, they were in good shape), all I did was a cleaning and replaced the pads. It was months ago, no news from the customer so... "no news is good news" like we say in France !
Daniel, "Having a Dreamcast that the GD-Rom drive doesn't do anything can be associated with the bad PSU connection particularly on the pin 6 that outputs 12V."
When you have issues with the GDrom, check the GDrom connector itself first, it's very unreliable. For instance (and this is an issue very poorly documented), if your DC hangs on the boot screen for 2 minutes, it just a bad connection between the MB and the GDrom assembly. Unplug, replug and it should work fine.
I'm not saying there wasn't an issue with your PSU on this one. But maybe you've disassembled it, checked everything, saw something with the 6th pin (let's say, you cleaned it) put everything back together and the GDrom was working again so you told yourself it had to be that 6th pin. It could have just been a bad connection between the MB and GDrom drive, that you fix without noticing.
@@SLRModShop Yeah... I personally only ever had one Dreamcast so my own experience on this is very (!) limited. And I had a conversation with one guy who does console repairs and he said that most Dreamcast he got had a bad PSU connection. And I saw one video years ago about a Dreamcast not reading discs where the GD-Rom Drive didn't do anything and the guy just added solder to the pins to be thicker and then it started to read again. And he didn't even clean or remove and reinsert the GD-Rom drive!
In any case, I'll think about chnaging my procedure when doing repairs like these. In general we need to inform ourselves from people who repair these about their experience.
Thanks for the info! And...
Sorry for the late answer...I wasn't pinged and I didn't check myself if someone responded until now.
@@danielblack6529 No worry, I'm making a huge repair guide that I will share online once it's finished. If you're interested, follow me on Twitter @vvJerome (I'm not trying to gain followers, you can unfollow me as soon as I release it). Today, I've found the RF eye pattern of the laser, you can check online, the info isn't there, trust me... So, you can expect a very thorough guide. I will also share it first with trusted modders so they can correct or add stuff before it goes online, my goal is to create the Bible of Dreamcast repairing.
This reminds me a lot of the GPU switching issues with 2010-2013 MacBook Pros. Everyone thought it was the lead-free solder on the Nvidia GPUs, but it was the capacitor feeding the GPU that caused the issue. But because it was right beside the GPU, everyone heating up the board would reheat the capacitor and “fix” their boards.
When it comes to gaming on the internet you can count on people to stubbornly believe the first thing they hear
I've noticed people who game on consoles tend to believe all sorts of bizzare rumors based on nothing as if they are established fact.
I believe you mate.
Kinda like you and this video.....
@@lobsterbark I’ve noticed people on the internet say all sorts of stupid shit because they know they won’t be held accountable but in the real world they’re silent little pussies because they know there’s a good chance they’ll get the shit beat out of them.
@@D426-y2q found the console player
This turned to a Luise Rossman video real quick
The 2011 mbp comes to mind...
@@rartolak YES, that's exactly what I was thinking.
Yeahhh that was some lit shit!!! you know what i'm talking about... that was like a fireworks board.
@@rartolak yeahhhh.....
They don't have pp bus
Nice video.
I just heard about these new findings and found this video upon research.
My launch 60GB ($600) PS3 got YLOD and has been sitting in my closet since 2010 because I didn't want to do any of the suggested fixes. It was either "reflow" or "reball" from everyone I spoke to. EVERYONE.
Reflow always seemed janky to me and it wasn't worth it for a 3 day fix.
Reball seemed just as janky but it was much more expensive with just as few guarantees.
I'm glad I held out as I'll be trying my own capacitor replacement to see if that works. I'm glad some other viable possibility for fixing has been found as the entire "it's all on lead-free solder" just never made total sense, not for ALL YLOD issues. I'm an amateur repair enthusiast and even I know the PS3 tops out at about 90c. 90c won't affect the solder balls usually. It just never made sense to me.
I always thought that:
A - The Cell CPU and RSX are complete dogshit
or
B - Something else is going on. I didn't know what but something else.
Based on my quick research I'm finding most fix their previously unfixable console via capacitor replacement.
I'd love to know what your conclusion are once you replace the tokens
@@RomeGoLARGE
I'll definitely add a reply here about the results after I do it.
@@DannyWilliamH sweet. Thanks bro.
I forgot to ask, with learning about these new possibilities, do you find it still necessary to replace the thermal paste?
@@RomeGoLARGE
I'm going to. These mass produced devices (consoles, GPU's, etc) are notorious for having garbage thermal paste.
I'm not going to de-lid or anything but the paste on the IHS is absolutely getting removed and replaced.
This is the absolute best, most concise explanation of the YLOD phenomena. My PS3 first generation 60 gig worked for 14 years until died two months ago.
I ended up throwing out mine in 2015 after about a half year trying to get it fixed. Lost 6000 songs, 30 music vids, and about 200 pics I had on it 😢. Wish this video was posted then I miss it to this day, the one true regret I have
I think the heaviest problem with the PS3 is error coding.
Most of the problems would display the yellow light, instead of a coded beep sequence or semilar.
Just tried this theory of heating the nec tokin of a cech2001a ps3 slim ylod (bought off Craigslist for next to nothing has factory warranty seal cleaned and untouched/scratched)on to the repairs I blocked off the rsx with kapton tape heat the Capacitors at 300c for 1min each side reinstalled everything together and it worked as it should. Just wanna leave a comment saying yes it worked for "me but for anyone eles who know right?
hamasaki kenji oh, I destroyed a ylod ps3 with my friends 4 months ago
Maybe replace them with either the same chips or an equivalent. That would fix it for longer. This is good to hear though
@Arnold101Knight I have already replaced my cap to tantalum caps from a dead cech3xxx board. I believe these nec tokin act iffy because of heat and solder making microscopic cracks plus have you seen these thing melt/shatter when people attempt to remove them carefully
@Arnold101Knight the heat seems to cause the cracks to connect temporariliy. Which is why it's not a Perm Fix like replacing them are. :)
It could also be the heat Charging the Caps but idk if thats as likely lol
In the middle of learning how to solder so I can replace the NEC Tokin capacitors. Even removing them seems difficult and there isn't a guide in English on the TH-cam's yet. My CECHA01 and CECHC03 will survive.
My mate Vince recently did one..
@@Jaydan121 Good timing. Saw it when it released.
Vince team, unite
yeah also saw the vince video,and this one popped up randomly,youtube sure do spy on us
I used a cheap heat gun off of Amazon, put it to 400 degrees took roughly 15-20 seconds came right off. Plastic did melt a tad but was no issue. I fixed my 40gb ps3 with this method
I think a great follow up would be steps to diagnosing the failure points. A sort of Louis Rossman approach.
Good suggestion
I had two sony 60gb phats die. One that Sony “fixed” and one “fixed” by an ebay person who used real lead. I temporarily fixed it and got as much as I could im trade-in. Wish I still had it.
Was that show you are referring to BBC watchdog?
Hey, also the PS3 heatsinks have an issue as well. They have too much vertical space below the motherboard and ultimately PULL on the GPU AND CPU hard.
The thermal paste bond between the IHS and Heatsink + gravity lets the heatsink tug on the RSX and CELL IH and pull it down. This physical force ultimately stresses the solder balls. I strongly believe this breaks connections whenever the RSX or CELL heats up. When these things get hot, the solder almost flows but slowly. (it'd take alot of thermal cycles)
For my PS3 with the infamous GLOD, the screen started to artifact and a small sparkgap noise came out of the console whenever the RSX hit 75C. It hardlocked immediately after.
This tells me some solder balls that deliver high current to the chip disconnected and caused a hardware error. (This caused a GLOD for me occasionally + interminent artifacting)
I flipped the ps3 upside down so the heatsinks (because of their weight+gravity) push the chips onto the motherboard. (just like what the coin method fix for GLOD tried to achieve)
AND MY THEORY WAS RIGHT! IT NOW WORKS SMOOTHLY!
Its been 6 months of constant usage and 0 noises, 0 artifacts, 0 freezing, 0 problems and played through a bunch of games at 68C.
It seems like every aspect of the PS3 was fucked to begin with. 😅
Exactly. It's unbelievable how the design- and all the inherent flaws in it- were approved. The only explanation is that they felt pressure to rush out Playstation V3 (PS3) w/o an intensive several-thousand-hour testing period on 100 machines. If several thousand hours seems extensive, consider that a new console buyer would easily average a minimum 2 hours/day. Let's say average over1000 hours year.
And here i am my 60gb PS3 still works
You mean the full hardware backwards compatibility one? ..there's such a unit that never had issue!? LOVE
Mine too. EU launch model.
I have a launch PS3 that hasn't experienced the YLOD yet. I want to open it up, clean it out, add new thermal paste and new thermal pads to replace the old originals.
Is there anything else you can recommend to do to keep an early PS3 alive and well in the long term? Something that doesn't require extremely difficult soldering?
Would you be willing to make a video series on maintaining game consoles for the long term? I'd watch all of them.
Jailbreak it and adjust the fan settings. The default fan settings let the console go way too hot before properly cooling it down.
@@calleha01 OK, I'll keep that in mind, thanks. If anyone has more tips, please share!
I water cooled mine for $35. Brought the temps from 85c to 45c...
It's a DINOSAUR
@@jjhack3r This is interesting, I'll look it up. Thanks!
God, yes. THAT. I previously got a YLOD PS3 that didn't behave like a problem with the soldering. But no matter where I asked and how I asked, they just told me "reball it!!". I did reball it. It didn't change a thing. I ended up breaking the motherboard after too many reopening and testing... Damn I hate those fake common knowledge.
I heard that a lot, your not the only one so dont feel bad.
For anyone that is truly interested in electronics repair i highly recommend some folks like Louis Rossmann video as he goes from diagnose to repair electronics demonstrations to get an idea of what your really getting into.
itz just a money thing, thats it, i knew that when the first said back in 2006-7 that it isnt what they sayin ^^ ;) as a PC guy we all a step above all other, thats a good thing :)
I personally had the luck and neither a „Red Ring of Death“ nor a „Yellow Light of Death“, but friends of me bought at least 2 Xbox 360s each. One to play games, one to send to Microsoft.
It reminds me of a job I had during college. A lot of computers on campus would fail due to bad caps on the motherboard. I spent a lot of time replacing them. At least it was easy to find on those motherboards as the caps would swell up.
Interesting video, never knew those capacitors were an issue! I've heard about the thermal paste under the IHS drying out over time, causing the system to run hotter than it should or shut down after a few minutes (this failure mode happened to my CECHG unit), and that nVidia GPUs in many laptops from the period the PS3 launched, between 2006-2008, had bad underfill processes causing them to fail, but this is new to me. At least the 360 has a secondary error code with its RROD to narrow the problem down - on PS3 you are just guessing.
I know this show you are referring to I think it was Watchdog here in the UK or another consumer related show. They were fixing the PS3's in the back of what looked like a truck and did say that some of them had stopped working again since the repair
I remember that video from a while back!
Great video.... explained perfectly. Could you do a video explaining how to diagnose each fault on the board? It would be awesome to see "Ok here's what we think is the problem"... and "Here's how you know!".....
I've actually repaired six PS3's by replacing the NECs with tantalums. Havent had a system fail again since :)
Do you do this as a side gig? If so, I have a YLOD PS3 that could use some help.
ps3 super slim no have nec tokins
@@maytizevb yep, I think the 25xx and 3xxx Slims uses tantalums and also the 4xxx series. Since this models doesnt suffer that much on YLOD, instead most of them experience we call blackout issue.
Is this a difficult process?
I have a 25xx model with the blackout issue. I have a working super slim I’ve been swapping caps with, haven’t tested all of them yet
Check out the PS3 "eraser" mod. I did it and my PS3 temps dropped 10C. This fix shows that earlier models of the PS3 simply didn't have enough mounting pressure for the CPU heatsink to stay cool. This isn't a sketchy mod either. It's just recreating what Sony did in later models that included a plastic cover for the CPU hole that increases mounting pressure.
Additionally adding CFW to your PS3 shows that Sony prefers running your consoles hot all the time in favor of low fan noise. My early model PS3 idled at 80C before the mod and the fans were sitting at less than 20%. To put that into perspective PS3s have an emergency shut off at 85C due to high heat. That is very little headroom and running the consoles that hot all the time is bound to lead to issues. The CFW has custom fan controls which I'll be using from now on so it doesn't die an early death. Fans aren't even much louder if you repaste and do the eraser mod.
Yup, i knew solder crack wasn't the primary issue, because some people also get YLOD after their PS3 wasn't played for a long time (stored in the box in a clean and dry place for years), and then they want to play some PS3 games, they turn on their PS3 and suddenly YLOD, last time the PS3 works perfectly.
That's why some retailer said "even if you're not playing your PS3 anymore, it's recommended to turn on your PS3 at least once a week for 30 minutes"
Man thanks for the info. I did not realize those were caps and how faulty they are. Sadly I already got rid of my PS3 Fat and moved to a slim.
For those that still have a fat, could you provide a link to the replacement caps you mentioned in the video?
I tear down, deep clean and repaste all my consoles at least once every 2 years, true cooling maintenance isnt everything but it goes a heck of a long way 🦊💜
Great scientific analysis. I repaired a friend's PS3 several times by "home-reflowing" the board on my electric frying pan. My thought process was the same as yours, I had assumed it was "some" solder joint or other component which liked being heated up again, but I wasn't assuming I was reflowing the CPU or GPU or anything targeted like that. As you say, it's a very heavy hammer of a fix. So heavy I was actually concerned with surface mount components falling off the underside of the board if I heated too much!
Backside components are attached with epoxy, which is usually dyed red. They first populate the backside, and during reflow, the epoxy sets, and then the main component side. If they could fall off, they would have fallen off while main component side was reflowed during manufacture.
awesome video so clear and easy to follow along! thank you for your time in taking to make this video. i have a ps3 ylod and it sits sadly on my shelf reminding me how much fun i had with it.
3:15 what game is that?
6:37 a bunch of bent pins
Look at all those pinises
I've fixed those before with a mechanical pencil, which really takes me back. :)
@@luminumlx2604 omg nobody gfs
@@jjhack3r what is gfs?
@@luminumlx2604 nobody gives a fucking shit
The issue with diagnosis is that the YLOD is so vague that it can be literally anything. Simple component came loose, NEC caps, overheating, or (in my case) the bga failed on either the rsx and/or the cell-be. Because most lacked the knowledge to read the syscon, the misdiagnosis happened and continues to happen.
The solution is to replace the nec tokin caps
can u easily replace them?
@@Kig_Ama that I don't know but it does require the use of a flat bladed knife
They don't come up easily. Takes a while working at them with a hot air gun to pull them up.
@@Kig_Ama define easily... they are a pain to extract... once removed you can put the new caps and thats it (remember to put them on correct side)
@@iamtheflu though, I've seen some people just "cut them" and solder caps on the side...
Not clean, just lazy... but works fine.
I love the production quality of these videos. Excellent graphics, script, and delivery
I am impressed, somebody who actually knows what he is talking about. Well done.
Fantastic! I am so glad the scientific mind still exists. I hope you explain everything you learn in video. Well done.
The bump issue with the bad underfill was very common. I just have to say two words: "nvidia bug"
But I think many chips in this transition period had similar issues, it took a while for the chip fabs to adopt to lead free solder.
A reball can sometimes be a fix, for example in a lot of AVRs from 2008-2015. All used texas instruments DSP chips. However some of those DSPs (I think chip date 2011-2012) had defective bumps as well. The failure was the same. The fix of reballing fixed most of them, but some died again. Those with the dead chip.
If you have one of them, just replace the chip with the newer version that does not fail. (Even with the good chip, add a heatsink, otherwise the solderballs below can crack)
Good thing people figured out how to use the SYSCON diagnosis software right around the time this video came out, enabling them to make a proper diagnosis.
Hell yeah, finally someone can back this "theory" up. I have been telling numerous people to not reflow anything, it's those NEC/TOKIN capacitors causing issues. Reflow is the only solution when the GPU is damaged to the point it's artifacting, but you are going to replace the RSX all together then.. That's the only point you really need to touch those solder balls. PCB on PS3 is very thick and solder does not melt that the temperature the PS3 is capable of outputting
Don't question, just open one of this caps and you will see the fucking black blob of melted tantalum in the middle of the capacitor, then you show this to your friend and solder new capacitors.
Todays consoles have an extremely high thermal mass to prevent overheating during those extended gaming sessions. But I wouldn't recommend a GPU reflow either.
Getting the board up to temp. requires a ton of heat and a ton of air flow, making it difficult to be precise, especially if you're using a hot air gun. You're more likely to bridge the solder balls rather than get them to resolidify in place. Plus you increase the likelihood of damaging something else.
@@fss1704 I opened one of those on my own PS3 when i delidded it, it was fine to my surprise :)
@@OnYourSquare + Software already throttles back and shut it down. Damage is more done by "reflowing"
@@StaticVapour590 That what I said. They are more likely to damage the unit, indiscriminately blasting heat across the board. We offer repair, recovery or restoration of data damage for Apple products with circuit damage. And one of the things we see most often are boards people simply BLASTED with heat, in a hail Mary attempt to fix it.
So when I see people giving out that TERRIBLE advise, I have to say something. Save the next guy from wasting his time on a roached board.
There was a massive problem with all sorts of semi conductors that used lead free ball grid array solder joints. It affected everything that used them at the time, even desktop GPUs. There are many studies of it. Lead free solder required more than 2x the temperature of 40% lead solder to fully turn to liquid and reharden correctly. This also hit around the time of the great capacitor plague where the world market was flooded with a stolen unfinished capacitor substrate formula that caused premature failure of electrolytic caps. It was a terrible time for reliability of every electronic device.
I recently bought a CECH-A01, from what I can tell it’s never been opened. Had a ton of dust balls (actual balls) inside the machine that I could see without opening it, all around inside it. There is a heating issue after the system being on for 20-30 mins. I can hear the fans get louder. Doesn’t sound like 100% speed. My question is, since it is an old console should I put new thermal paste under the IHS for the RSX and the CPU? I would get it professionally done of course. And does anyone know someone who does it in the US? Currently I just see someone on eBay I might use.
Professionally done? I am a "Professional" at that and I've done it maybe 3 times.
It's not hard. Have more respect for your own capabilities.
Or don't, whatever.
I don't know crap about PS3s, but if they're anything like general purpose computers thermal paste is fairly simple. Clean out the dust and see if it does any better. If it does, problem solved!
nexxusty yeah I’ve decided to do it myself. Bought a trash fat console for $20 just to make sure I don’t have an issue on the one I actually care about.
cachemist the Heat spreaders (IHS) are glued down with silicon. So it’s a little more complicated than just replacing thermal paste. Basically it’s like delidding your CPU.
@@Evil_Chronic NSC Modz here on youtube has developed a method to de-lid these which is borne from his intense work on untold number of PS3's. (Check out his videos.) He's a somewhat wacky, extremely talkative, nice guy in Germany. His videos go on too long but are instructive. He has multiple ones on the IHS, and how easy it is to *destroy them* w/o patience, proper technique, and proper tools, and he shows you how to do it, and extended videos on proper re-pasting of the whole shebang.
I wish I could discover your channel earlier. This and many other videos of yours are so interesting. Man, good work!
I used the blow-dryer method to fix my ps3 temporarily. Does this mean my YLOD was actually a solder problem rather than a capacitor one?
A hair dryer doesn't get air hot enough to melt lead free solder, so no.
Did the same, managed to get the disc and transfer all save files to a slim system, thank god.
The correct answer is: It's warms NEC Tokin capacitors back to life but it is not a very long lasting repair and we can’t know how long it will work.
You got a new sub friend, fantastic video, thank you! Also the very first time I've heard yld and the NEC capacitor as a probable cause, its nearly always blamed on the solder or reballing.
Trapped gas in the circuit board? Could someone please explain to me what that even means?
Timmy Dirtyrat has to be marketing garbage. (Just guessing that it means nothing)
Bubbles pushing up the traces. If it's bad enough, it could break a trace and ruin it.
_"... but hopefully understandable."_
THANK YOU for demystifying such an integral part of our devices.
In 2000 I built my own computer and since then I've tinkered with lots of hardware. In all that time, I've never encountered even this simple an explanation of a CPU.
It's been the equivalent of "I'll do carpentry but call an electrician." Now I feel much more confident about where to start when I want or need to learn more. 👏✌️🍍
They did the reballing in my PS3 launch model and it worked just for 2 weeks. Threw the console to the bin and never bought any Sony product anymore.
Incidentally it's interesting that both my 60GB and 80GB PS3s (fairly early models) AND 2 Toshiba laptops from that era have never suffered from power problems like this.
(They have had their problems, sure. But things like hard impact, immersion, infection, corrupt RAM, and drive failure were never a _result of_ issues described in this video! 😁🍍)
6:35 UGH bent pins on that 486!
I thought it was widely accepted/known that both the 360 and ps3 used thin and cheap silicon for the motherboards. With the heat from them causing the board to flex too much which in turn broke the solder loose from the board.
Cutest support capacitors ever shown on video
I have no real clue why I clicked on this video, but I found it pretty interesting. Good job on it too!
wow its 2019 and ive owned 3 ps3's 1 launch edition 2 slims and this is the 1st time of me hearing about this lol
Episodes like this are what keep me coming back, despite the way you pronounce "display." ;)
this why i never buy the launch model, but wait for the slim model after they worked out the bugs
Erwin Maes And then that’s where my launch model Xbox one gives out and I have to get the next iteration.
Well not always tbh
I still have my launch PS4 working flawlessly to this day.
My launch PS3 still runs just fine. I don’t play it nearly as often as I used to but it fires up every time I go to use it.
Ps4 seems to be good. But yes this is generally good advice to live by
Just looking into this as I'm thinking about reviving my phat PS3 60 GB. Loving how you keep an open mind and are not afraid to say that a lot of lore and solutions out there are just assumptions and people echoing.
The hard part: guess I'll have to learn how to properly diagnose mine before decide what cause the YLOD on mine. Cheers mate!
You failed to talk about the other major problem with the Yellow Light of Death... Bad Blu Ray Laser Modules... I used to repair PS3's through eBay at a rate of about 10 to 20 a week in 2008 and 2009.. This was a major problem that was easily fixable by getting a Japanese made laser module vs the factory provided Chinese part.
Yes. There were also problems with power supplies going out - various revisions of the PSUs run hotter while others are more efficient, etc. My primary focus for this was the most generally accepted "assumption." One of my good friends that bought a PS3 not too long after I bought mine had the blu-ray drive go out on his system. Frustrating, for sure.
Would that really cuase a yellow light situation? The PS3 didn't actually need a funcitoning bluray drive to start or even to run games since it had an online store and all.
You say "failed", I say "now I have an excuse to ask for a part 2"
How come? I've yet to stumble upon a yellow light caused by a bluray laser module.
I love how you bring up the thing with the GameGear about the capacitor failure. Mine kinda works but not the speaker and quiet left audio on headphones, and screen requires a very long warmup
Great video thanks. What did Sony and Microsoft learn from the PS3 and 360 which has enabled PS4 and XBONE to be much more reliable? I have an original fat backwards compatible PS3 that still works! But the drive can be a little temperamental
Well one part of the FC-BGA improvement was the die shrink. Computers around this era that pushed for more raw power one way or another really put out a LOT of heat, and the industry started to focus more on multi-cores, CPU/GPU optimization and cooling. Consoles pulled in the reigns a bit concerning pushing forward with raw speed. That is better for a "longer short term" life of the consoles for sure.
Microsoft straight up learned the hard way due to rushing production of the Xbox 360, and I am sure they said "let's never do THAT again" after paying billions to right the wrong.
@@DisplacedGamers This generation of consoles actually puts out around the same amount of heat but in a smaller surface area now that they both use an APU.
My fat PS3 only just this year started getting the yellow light but it still turns on all the way and works for now
I have the PS3 fat and experienced the Yellow Light of Death early on! Except, I have to press the power on button again, and again and then it starts to turn on finally 😂
I don't know why it does it, or even why it works, but it still does. Lol!
Probably lack of power on those chips
@@SummonerArthur but it's still working for years now
@@nowonmetube I'd recommend you to go out, buy tentalum capacitors and replace those dodgy NEC/TOKIN caps. Your PS3 will be thankful.
Sounds like the capacitors.
@@JerrySM64 thanks, my PS3 died now, so I'll try reviving it with those.
I'm surprised no one mentioned what the show was that he refused to mention.
The one problem that the PS3 has and there’s not even a big enough sample. Bravo
I used to repair PS3 YLOD's, we never touched the cooling (other than a re-paste, due to often drying out), and never reflowed anything...
What we used to do, was...
A full clean of the system,
Then place it in a warm/hot place for 24 hours (we had a cupboard we setup with thermal sheets internally, a thermostat and heater/cooler system to regulate, we used to keep it at around 50c internal temp) (this brings all components up to a thermal equilibrium, so any expansion/compression due to temperature differences is eliminated.
After allowing to cool (in the same location, at a controlled speed)
Then, we would perform a full reset of the system via safe/recovery mode.
This worked on 8 out of 10, and the return rate was very low, and any that were returned were often a good 6+ months later, and often a different issue...
Odd occasions we would replace capacitors or voltage regulators, we would usually test components if a PS3 was returned.
This wasn't my methodology, it was what I was told to do :)
I like your funny words, magic man.
Fixed well over 1000 PS3s with my custom reflow technique when I was in business here in Australia, my warranty was 6 months, I had a return rate of less than 5% and I made $1000s of dollars. My tool was a $25 heat gun, but my technique was what made the difference. The problem I believe was isolated to the CPU and GPU area, the rest of the board I kept cool during the reflow and the process only took 8 mins, which includes the warm up and the cool down process as well. Nice video.
Kills me how no one states most consoles that got YLOD weren’t treated or ventilated well enough. Everyone forgets technology needs a proper environment.
Mine got YLOD after left unused in the past 2 years, it worked flawlessly up until then and that's why I'm blaming it on the loss of capacitance over time of these NEC-Tokin capacitors.
6:35 that pin grid array has seen better days :)
I used to work at a console repair shop during the height of the RRoD and YLoD occurrences. We would reflow the PS3 motherboard in reflow oven with only the 2 chips exposed and it would fix it 9 out of 10 times, and we would rarely get returns. And the 1 out of 10 times the reflow wouldn't work, reballing would usually do the trick. We must've done hundreds if not thousands of PS3's during that time. I'm not disputing what you claim, but I thought I'd share my experiences with it.
Was the HDD data safe from corruption?
What about the ones who failed and didnt tell you and just bought a new one?
@@Clay3613 HDD was almost always fine after a successful reflow/reball. I've only really seen a few cases when that happens, and it's because the HDD itself went bad.
@@odd4189 Well, I suppose I can't account for those. But among the people I knew who I've repaired their PS3, I saw only a couple fail again, and that was maybe a year or more later.
@@evmaxx31 So what causes a PS3 to turn on then turn right back off into standby mode?
Funny you mention the Game Gear because it's well assumed in the community that many LCDs are faulty, but it's often either caps or ripple on the power supply.
Good info - I just bought my 1st PS3 yesterday (phat BC model), & it seems to be in good condition & works well so far. Only really bought it for PS1/PS2 BC. I do plan to pull it apart & blow/clean out the dust & change the thermal past. Hopefully it will last me a while! :)
Funny how my 60GB PS3 still works 15 years later and I've never had an issue with it. I still use it to this day.
after more research in the PS3 repair community, the issue is still usually the RSX, not the NEC Tokin caps. There's a new modchip available that lets you swap RSX chips from a donor PS3 btw
I still feel like it could be the nec/tokins because they were very prone to failing
Why all NEC TOKIN Caps just fckng failing?
I used to put my PS3 in a box and use a hair dryer at max temperature to fix my YLOD issue. The problem is that my PS3 would stop working again about every month or so. If applying heat to certain types capacitors while they're not supplying a voltage restores them to working order, then that would explain the issue that I was having with my PS3. Eventually it wouldn't turn on even if I used a hair dryer, so I guess either the capacitors failed or the heat from the hair dryer messed up another component. I still have it since it's the original 60 GB model with PS2 and PS1 backwards compatibility. Maybe I'll fix it for real someday.
Holy shit this info dump is GLORIOUS!!
Fantastic vid bro!!!
After 4 years my PS3 finnaly gave up ive tried everything to fix it but it no longer can stay on for at least 5 seconds so all my old Minecraft worlds and game data is probably lost but idk what to do tbh
How did this end up into the devilartemis Playlist 👁👄👁
Yeah idk either
Minor correction: for BGA components with collapsing balls voids ARE acceptable as long as there is 30% or less voiding of ANY BALL in the X-RAY image area. Class 1,2,3
however
For BGA connections with NONcollapsing balls voids are UNacceptable. Class 1,2,3
Heh. There was a time when I was going through a few documents from the SMTA and wondered how far down the rabbit hole I wanted to go in my script.
Yeah i just got my info from my "ipc j-std-001f" or J standard book. Page 43.
That being said while i agree that people shouldnt just assume the problem lies with the solder balls overheating definitly played a major factor in many ps3 deaths. Especially if you were unlucky enough to get one of those nichicon power supplies that has a name that starts with "Z" and then vomits the rest of its name.
Had a friend who was gifted a 60 gig and she wanted me to work on it before she really started using it. It had one of those PSUs so i replaced it with an aps231 and replaced the cooling compound which was dry and bubbly. Probably saved the system from an expected and quick death.
I need an alternator for my car because my friend needed an alternator before on their car
When my Ps3 died from the yellow light, I remember temporarily fixing it by wrapping it in a towel and blasting a hair dryer on it for fifteen minutes
It worked, but not for very long :P
What an awesome video! Thank you. You explain everything so clearly. I learned a few things.
My launch PS3 got a Yellow light about 5 years ago, unplugged it, turned it off and back on again and never saw it again. Assuming it may return one day.
The funniest thing about "assumptions" is that the xbox 360s issues had nothing to do with solder as well. They used some nickel alloy washers for the CPU heatsink (I believe, its been a long time now, just know that these washers were the culprit in 99% of RLOD) that would expand and contract as the console was thermal cycling (ie. playing a game and turning it off). This would eventually work the heatsink away from the CPU and cause the console to flag this via a sensor on the board that detected the loose HSF. You could do a series of button presses on the front of the console (shown to me by a M$ employee at the time, who also clued me in to the washer issue, and the internal statistics that it was the problem on almost 99% of the consoles they got sent) to get it to display an error code on the screen even while RRODing, and the code would tell you what got flagged and it was ALWAYS this. I used to repair these things in college and the fix always was to just tighten the HSF. I did hundreds, maybe even a thousand of these things for people while undercutting M$ cost to send it in which is why a lot of people used my service. Even in my medium sample size I never ran into a unit that was legitimately overheating or had a dead chip etc. The xbox never was "overheating" as everyone thought, or had issues with solder. This misconception sold a lot of fan-destroying 3rd party cooler accessories though! People would do reflows, removing the HSF in the process and reattaching, which made it LOOK like it worked when in fact all that was needed was a screwdriver. Introducing variables, as he was talking about. The "Xclamp" fix ALSO CALLED FOR REPLACING THE WASHERS lol. This is also the exact kind of problem that can develop during console development: consoles that are constantly being reassembled in testing, and with long term tests that aren't long enough for an issue like this to crop up before the users get it. (Exactly like these NEC caps) These long term tests also are generally leaving the console on for extremely long periods, which means the console never, or not often thermal cycled and therefore the washers didn't have enough cycles to expand and contract to finally dislodge the HSF. So I guess if you really want your original 360 to have a long life, turn it off as little as possible or just never use it, lol.
The reason the turnaround was so fast on 360s that were sent in, is that M$ was simply doing the same thing I was and sending the unit back out. They would tighten the HSF again, and send it to some other poor chap with it being to guaranteed happen again after enough thermal cycling. They changed the washer material to one that didn't expand from the xbox 360 elite on, and magically the issues all went away! I actually bought an elite at this point and that thing never had an issue lol. People always think M$ was losing a ton of money (more like lost profit) on the 360 warranty/repairs after warranty but they just weren't, charging people 100-150 at the time to send it in and paying someone to tighten some screws, with it all not taking very long means they could crank these things out, and even make money if the console was out of warranty. I certainly was.... You don't think M$ would extend the warranty without a plan, right?
I've always just taken my PS3 apart and cleaned out the dust, and replaced the thermal paste. That has worked for me with multiple different PS3s. Unfortunately, the poor design of the PS3 means that no old fat model PS3 stays fixed for long, but I'm planning on modding my "old reliable" with more modern fans and the best quality thermal paste I can buy.
I gotta say while yes most ylods on smaller RSX ps3s are due to the nec tokins, the backwards compat ones actually usually also have RSX damage due to the spreader on the RSX being slightly flawed and from my experience it's best to replace both the rsx and the caps on the original backwards compatible ps3s
Those NEC Tokins were fine, though like any other capacitor they’ll naturally fail during their lifetime. The big problem is how unreliable the GPU was found in early models.
@@crazedlunatic43so is the best setup then to replace the NEC/TOKINS with new NEC/TOKINS then replace the gpu with a later RSX in 65nm or something?
@@TheOnlyPedroGameplays Under normal circumstance, you shouldn’t need to replace the NEC Tokins in the first place unless they go bad. If they do go bad, then replacing them with brand new NEC Tokins should do or you may also choose to replace them with compatible capacitors like the Tantlaum ones. Either way, the NEC Tokins aren’t faulty as the general public once believed and you should be fine with just leaving them alone for now. As for the GPU, a good chunk of the 90nm batches will inherently fail and replacing them with either a 65nm or 40nm will do.
@@crazedlunatic43 okay, I’ll remember this if I get a PlayStation 3 FAT. My dad has a slim model, and I really respect its modest design and great reliability but the fat with backwards compatibility is functional and just very beautiful.
PS3 was at the peak of Sony’s aesthetics, and so owning one of those might even be more worth it than a PS2 with fan+HDD and homebrew.
The problem is likely a result of the flip chip manufacturing flaw. Heard somewhere those die bindings get cracked due to heat. One, two, even 3 cracked binds wouldn't cause a problem, but the more cracked binds you have, the higher the failure rate of the system. I remember hearing some people diagnosed rsx (gpu) manufacturing flaw. Some poeple even took rsx from super slim models and put it on the backwards compatible ylod phat ps3. And the reason why blasting these parts with heat seems to "fix" the consoles is because something gets reflown, some ball bind that had cracks on the flip chip die starts making proper contact and it "works" again. All the things you mentioned have a high "faliure" rate, and to fix it you have to diagnose what failed out of all those things.
My two takeaways:
1. This is the first I've heard of this yellow light of death. I've heard of beeping and powering off, and a blue light with no other functionality.
2. Someone X-raying the board and declaring that air trapped in the board is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. I've worked on thousands of computers and accessories, and I've never even heard of such a thing. Circuit boards aren't stamped together, they're chemically etched layer by layer.
I vacuumed my vents out and it's working perfectly now.
The issue with the 360 was due to the wrong lead free solder used.
It would crack due to the heat generated by the CPU and GPU.
That said there's something worse about lead free solder.
Tin whiskers.
The lead stops them from growing.
Without lead they can grow.
So eventually devices with lead free solder will fail due to tin whisker growth.
And chips with more terminals will fail quicker as there's less space between the terminals.
I have that toshiba laptop that died too, now i know the source of the problem that from nec capacitor after all this time
my original fat 80gb ps3 just died. It lasted 11 years. It was sitting vertical and faced no problem at all until it randomly died 2 days ago. F for the yellow led of death. My ps2 still works though