Replacing thermal compound on the PS3

[ksloth]

Hey guys. For quite a while now, my 2007 60GB PS3 had been running hot. Simply idling at the Xross Media Bar would bring the fan up to level 2 speed.

I blew the dust out of it religiously and never smoked around it, but I had a sneaking suspicion that after 5 years, the heatsink compound was no good anymore.

Today I bought a tube of Arctic Silver 5, and opened her up to this:





Sure as shit, the heatsink compound was completely hardened and crumbling. The inside of the console was almost completely dust free. Suspicion confirmed.

I cleaned both the heat spreaders on the Cell and GPU, cleaned up the fan blades on the massive heatsink, put a fresh blob of arctic silver down for each chip, and put her back together. Afterwards, I let it run a little folding at home to really get it heated up.

I can happily say that it idles very quietly now, and I feel a lot more confident that I will be able to squeeze another 5 or more years out of this little black box of joy.

I recommend doing this to anyone who is running a non-slim PS3 of that many years of age. It really wasn't hard to do at all. The only part that required any real effort was just making sure to be careful when disconnecting ribbon cables, and remembering where all the screws go.

Here is the YouTube video I watched to help me figure out how to disassemble the thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFmV9zNV ... ata_player

This was a pretty fun project actually. It's pretty cool to see all the guts of the PS3, and it wasn't nearly as tough as I thought it would be. I regret not doing this sooner.

[Cronozilla]

Yes it's very easy to do and very beneficial. People need to just make sure they don't yank out ribbon cables, the locks are very fragile.

Thermal paste is one of the first places manufacturer's cut the budget. Because, saving ten cents on some thermal paste translates into a few millions in savings on a production run.

But the PS3 is pretty tough if it doesn't get above 100ºC, thankfully. (130ºC+ is when the solder joints become brittle, the melting point is somewhere around 180ºC ... now if a lot of people are having YLOD issues from this ... you can imagine it's getting pretty damn hot. The biggest oversight is the lack of a hardware shut off safety feature, or at least one that actually works.)

It's a good idea to do this to new GPUs too, as long as they cover it in the warranties. The thermal paste isn't anywhere near as bad as this stuff, but something nice like arctic silver yields much better heat capacitance and lower temperatures.

[ksloth]

Yeah! I was amazed at how crappy the thermal compound was. It's like the freebie stuff that used to come with really low end parts like Cyrix CPU's and early AMD's.

I just knew I was going to find it in the state I did. It was very satisfying cleaning it up and putting the Arctic Silver on. I know that it is much happier now!

[Cronozilla]

Yeah, a lot of devices would benefit from replacing the paste ... as long as you make sure it's all cleaned up when you're done. Nothing worse than putting on some arctic silver (which is conductive) in a crevice you didn't mean to and burning something out.

To note, on the PS3, there is more thermal paste, it's between the memory chips on top of the actual PS3 chips under the metal plate. But it's more like adhesive almost. Most people damage them trying to get it off to replace the paste that's there

Oh well, the main issue is the fan removing heat from the metal spreader anyway.

[Anapan]

I have a currently happy slim PS3, but I'll confidently reset it's heatsync at the first sign of trouble. Arctic Silver is the only thermal compound I've ever used (not like it's expensive or hard to get), and it's worked first time every time for me. 1 dead 360 (WTF is with that double sided tape crap?), 4 CPU upgrades of my own, and many customer repairs that never called back. It's never failed in my experience.

[Whatever]

There is thermal paste under those metal plates as mentioned. The actual cpu/gpu die touches those plates underneath. The GPU holds up much better than the CPU.
The CPU heatspreder is glued onto the CPU with a silicon type glue.
The problem with that is it can flex when hot. Once that happens, the dried up thermal paste seal is broken. This results in really high fan speeds and cold air blowing out the back.
The GPU seal (even dried up) holds up better as it glued to the chip with a ceramic thermal adhesive.
This is really common on G01 consoles, and somewhat common on other non backwards compatible models.

Removing the CPU heatspreader is something you should never attempt. Just a warning.
You need custom homemade tools to remove it.

Good to hear replacing the top thermal paste worked out for you.

[Ziggy]

It boggles my mind why they would use such shitty thermal paste.

I have a 40GB PS3, I have a tube of Céramique, but I think I'll be too lazy to do that any time soon.

Good to know though, thanks for the info!

[kamiboy]

Deuce, I should get around to doing this before retiring my launch 60GB. Then again I've been wanting to retire that old dog for over a year now and I've yet to put aside the means to buy a slim model. When will they hit 150$ again?

Also, whenever I do open up a console I usually end up regretting it. Usually by a combination of left over screws that I do not remember where I pulled out of and the always fun situation that arises when subpar screws and drivers meet and assure mutual destruction.

Nothing more fun that putting back a screw for a lid, discovering that one forgot something and when going for opening thing up again to realize that the screw is now too spent to turn and that lid will remain sealed forever.

[Ziggy]

^ I use to have the leftover screw problem. The obvious easy way to solve this problem is to put screws in piles and write down where they go. This is what my brother does when he works on cars. But of course, I'm too lazy to do that! Here's what I do now, I keep a couple of different bottle caps on my work bench. I have some clear ones from Poland Spring bottles, and some blue ones from Dasani, and maybe a third type. Every major step of disassembling the console will get its own cap, even if they're different types of screws. I'll know that the first cap has all the screws for the exterior of the console, maybe the second cap has the screws for the shield or whatever, next cap has the screws to mount the optical drive, etc, etc. This method has been working out pretty well for me.

Even if you don't use the method to remember where all the screws go, I really like keeping the screws in bottle caps. Makes them easier to locate and harder to loose. I HATE when a small screws rolls off the work bench!

[Ngamer]

Does anybody know if this will also help cool down the PS3?



or is it just a myth?