PS3 Opening up a Phat one

[Rissy]

I've never opened up my Phat 80GB (now 500GB) machine, and it's still original in every way except the HDD.

Is this something which people are doing now, for activities like replacing the CMOS motherboard battery and/or renewing thermal paste on processors?

Are either of these activities worth doing? Is the thermal paste on the old Playstations (1, 2 and 3) getting old now meaning it doesn't conduct heat away as efficiently as it did? Same with the battery. Are these dying on consoles yet, meaning I should think about changing mine out now too?

Anything else other than these two activities (if required) which warrants opening up an otherwise unmolested machine?

 

[GuilloteTesla]

Golden rule here is: "if ain't broken, don't fix it".

If your temps are good (never over 70 ºC while playing, and never reaching 80 ºC on heavy loaded games), there is no need to replace the thermal paste. If your temps are over 65 ºC on idle, then you should consider doing some maintenance.

Regarding the CMOS battery, there is a catch. Once the battery is dead, the internal clock is reset and there is no way to set it to current time and date other than login in to PSN.

I don't remember other issues of having the internal clock not update, other than earning game trophies.

 

[nCadeRegal]

If it has never been opened I would recommend to disassemble and do a deep cleaning of everything. You can clean and apply new thermal paste to the top of the ihs, but you could also replace the thermal paste under the ihs. The latter is better handled by someone who has experience doing so as one scratch could ruin the die of the rsx, and cell.

 

[Rissy]

Golden rule here is: "if ain't broken, don't fix it".

If your temps are good (never over 70 ºC while playing, and never reaching 80 ºC on heavy loaded games), there is no need to replace the thermal paste. If your temps are over 65 ºC on idle, then you should consider doing some maintenance.

Regarding the CMOS battery, there is a catch. Once the battery is dead, the internal clock is reset and there is no way to set it to current time and date other than login in to PSN.

I don't remember other issues of having the internal clock not update, other than earning game trophies.

The only thing is right now, as told, I have no way of telling the temperature, and if the fan doesn't change speed with OFW, then that's not even a guide. I take it the only guide or idea of a temperature issue is the console beeping and shutting itself down....?

While i'm on OFW, maybe then it'll be worth changing out the CMOS battery since I can still go online with mine. Has nobody ever tried parallelling up another battery to the onboard one so it catches the memory retention while the main battery is changed out, and then remove the parallel battery again? The voltage will stay the same doing this, and the chipset is only ever going to draw down the current it requires anyway, so the fact that briefly there will be twice the current capacity should be neither here nor there.

 

[Rissy]

If it has never been opened I would recommend to disassemble and do a deep cleaning of everything. You can clean and apply new thermal paste to the top of the ihs, but you could also replace the thermal paste under the ihs. The latter is better handled by someone who has experience doing so as one scratch could ruin the die of the rsx, and cell.

Well, there's two conflicting pieces of advice then. I can relate to the "if it aint broke...." mindset, but i can also understand the preventative maintenance mindset too. I believe my console will be pretty clean inside as it's always been put in pride of place under the TV, kept clean and relativley dusted around; but....i guess the only proof is in the pudding. So until I open it up, I really don't know for sure. Every so often, I've done the fan blow through trick on it (hold down disc eject as turning on the rocker switch), so maybe that's helped keep it cleaned through?
I opened up my PS2 once, and gave it a bit of a clean, years and years ago. It wasn't too bad at all, and didn't really need opening up as it turned out. That's been reboxed, same as my original PS1 has been for years now.

 

[witek-pl]

For me is much easier than dissasembling older Asus notebooks. Plus there is many teardown videos on YT. Is good to manage all screws not to loose any or confuze. Dropping BR Drive may be a little dangerous becouse some plastics from CD insert mechanism may fall out of place (that was my case) and fix that may be a pain in ass.

 

[GuilloteTesla]

Phat PS3 are more complicated to open up than PS2. The most dangerous part is trying to separate the motherboard from the heatsinks, as those can apply surface pressure and a bad bend on the motheboard could break your console.

As @witek-pl said, check YouTube videos first to see how it's done.