This is a brief guide on how to sort out the most common errors you
may have experienced with your PS3. These errors are usually a red light on PS3
or the yellow light of death. Now both of these errors are due to a
error on the motherboard. Fortunately this does not necessarily mean
that your PS3 is completely broken. There is a fairly easy fix.
The first thing to do is see if there is a cable loose, and if not,
attempt to restart your console. Then try pulling out all of the cables
except the power cable, and then reconnect them. Hopefull thats it. But
if its still not working which may be the case, then go on to the next
stage.
Unfortunately the CPU and GPU have become disconnected on the
motherboard, which caused the red light on PS3 or yellow light of death
and you will need to get inside to make a repair. Don't worry, this is
not difficult and requires absolutely no electronics skills at all.I
wouldn't have been able to do it if it was complicated.
You will have to disassemble your console and strip it down to work on
the motherboard. You will need a phillips and a flathead screwdriver to
do this. Ensure that you clean any fluff and dust that has got inside
whilst you are doing this.Its a good opportunity to do this kind of
maintenance. You'll know when you have located the motherboard. Its kind
of obvious as it is a large green circuit board. Its the only one there
is.
In the middle you will see two square areas of circuitry that are
covered in a greyish-blue paste. These are the heat sinks. You need to
clean off this paste using an Isopropyl alcohol (that can be found in
most computer shops) or turpentine. I found that using an alcohol based
cleaning wipe also works.
Once these are both cleaned completely you need to get a heat gun and
put the setting to 315 degrees C. As I didn't have one I used a hair
dryer on maximum settings. You should then heat the whole of the board
up, front and back for a couple of minutes, using the heat gun roughly
an inch over the board. Then concentrate the heat on the heat sinks and
the surrounding bits of circuitry for about 25 seconds each. Those times
are for the heat gun. A hair dryer may not be as hot as that so I would
focus on the board for about 10 minutes, and then on the individual
bits of circuitry for roughly a minute each. This worked for me. When
done leave the motherboard alone for 15 minutes. DO NOT TOUCH or you
will have to start again.
This part of the process is the repair. What you are doing is heating up
the solder in the bad circuitry enough so that a repair can be made to
make abetter connection again. During the time that the solder is
cooling it is setting. If you touch the board during this time it could
go wrong again and you would have to start again.
After 15 minutes you have to reapply fresh thermal paste to the heat
sinks. Remember that bluish-grey stuff you cleaned off? You should use a
proper thermal paste such as Arctic Silver 5. Once again you can find
this at most computer shops, and it doesn't cost very much. But, for a
temporary fix you can use toothpaste (yes I said toothpaste) to act as
the thermal paste. But I repeat, this is purely a temporary fix. Just
smear a small amount finely over the heat sinks evenly using a credit
card or something else small and flat. You should almost be able to see
through the paste. Do this to both heat sinks.
Put back together your PS3 and you're finished. Power up your PS3 and
you should find that the red light on PS3 or yellow light of death,
whichever problem you had, has been sorted.
So thats the end of my guide. If you follow this then you could save
yourself $150-$200 from Sony's repair bill. You could also make sure
that you do not lose the data on your hard drive as Sony would send you
back a reconditioned one with a blank hard drive. You could have your
machine back working in less than an hour instead of waiting for up to
six weeks.
Hope this page has been helpful to sort out your PS3 flashing red light problem.