PS3 PS3 CECH004 fan going wild

[allen_hitman]

Hello, I am new to the forum, hope it's not a repeated thread. For some time I've learnt of these BC PS3's and wished to have one. Being from Romania, the fully compatible A/B models are not available (we are PAL region, I know those 2 are NTSC). I knew only the semi CECHC is my option. A month ago I started to search on SH sited and facebook marketplace for Phat PS3s. I asked all sellers the model names and were all H, L and so on. Two weeks ago it was one post of a "PS3 which can play PS2 and PS1 games" at the equivalent of 180 EUR. I contacted the guy to negotiate, and he told me it was sold, so I was "damn, these are wanted !" One week later I saw a phat PS3 and the title was "PS3 with 9 games and a joystick issue - 50 EUR" (it was missing a small plastic between R1 and R2). I asked the boy a picture of model name, he sent picture with label: CECHC04. I bought it right away. 3 days ago arrived. It's stock by FW, 4.88 now, requested update. I turned it on, and started with medium fan noise, after 3 mins went 1 step high on fan speed. All this in it's OS menu, not in a game, after another 5 mins of setting various in its settings the fan went another speed up, sounding like a helicopter. Then in the upper right corner I saw a message: "System is hot, please turn off to cool" or something like that. What is the first step to do ? I thought to myself that at beginning of December, after salary, I intend to buy a Grizzly thermal paste for both my PC and this PS3. I intend to disassemble it, clean it of dust and apply the Grizzly. Can that be enough for occasional use ? I also have a slim PS4, put do not use it either more then 3-5 times a month. I just wanted a BC PS3 for collection, to know that I posses something valuable, not necessary to use it intense. I have a cousin who has a lot of PS2 games, all famous ones, I intended to borrow them from him as he cannot play them on his PS2 on new TV (low res from console, no upscalling etc...). Is it mandatory a delid ? What advices do you have for a new PS3 phat user ? Thanks in advance.
PS, after formatting the storage, YouTube disappeared and I did not find it in the video apps gallery, can I still add it ?

 

[sandungas]

Dissassemble it now and dont get hurry, is better to take some time to do some checks
The first thing you need to keep attention is the state of the actual paste, if is very dry or if it was not covering all the surface thats a great synthom, it means you should have a nice improvement with the grizzly

You can start by checking the flatness of the surfaces as i was mentioning here

If you have other thermal pastes at home... i suggest to use your worst thermal paste to do what im going to say (because is going to be wasted, using a high quality paste for this sucks because is expensive)
Fior the first test spread a very thin layer of paste (the thinnest posible) with the method of the credit card, then assemble the PS3 and do some stress tests (by playing some demanding games) for a couple of days, and take notes of the resulting temperatures in a controlled enviroment (using always the same game, starting from ambient temperature, and doing the same things in the game), after that couple of days (to allow the paste to cure and to spread) dissassemble the PS3 and keep attention at how the thermal paste looks
I dont know how to explain this with words (and without photos), but you should see the whole pasted surface have like "rifts" (because the surfaces was doing some kind of "suction" effect on it)
If you see there is some area of the spreaded paste that doesnt have any mark probably means that was not touching the other surface, thats very bad... and probably matches with the "curvatures" you found in the first test finding the flatness of the surfaces

In that case... the easy solution is to increase the pressure by bending the clamps a bit
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/h...sound-but-no-display.35685/page-2#post-315026

Or... increasing the thickness of the layer of thermal paste, with the "credit card" method i mentioned, repeat it but spreading a thicker layer... then assemble the PS3 and play with it another couple of days to see the results (again take note about all the details and compare with the temperatures you got in the previous tests)

When you are done with all this tests you will have a better understanding of how thick needs to be the layer of thermal paste for your PS3... this is when you need to cleanup very well the (bad quality) thermal paste, and use the thermal grizzly paste

Probably you already know, but the thermal pastes should not be "recycled", after you aply and attach the heatsink on top and then you remove the heatsink the only thing you should do with it is to clean it up
Otherway, if you recycle it there are going to be air bubbles, etc... that reduces the performance

For the first tests i mentioned (where is needed to dissassemble and assemble the PS3 several times) you can use bad quality thermal paste, and you can recycle it, but the last application with the grizzly needs to be NEW paste (and with the correct thickness for your PS3)
As a general rule... in the PS3 is always better to exceed a bit the thickness because the surfaces doesnt uses to be perfectly flat, this way it fills the gaps better


-----------
Edit:
Also, check if your heatsink have this problem
Is a problem that could happen in the heatsinks of the PS3 slims (and maybe the others, im not sure), what happens is one of the metal blocks of the heatsink gets "stucked" and cant move up/down

The result is the "frame" of the heatsink doesnt allows the metal block to do a good contact... is like if one of the metal block is "pulling" from the other metal block

 

[allen_hitman]

Dissassemble it now and dont get hurry, is better to take some time to do some checks
The first thing you need to keep attention is the state of the actual paste, if is very dry or if it was not covering all the surface thats a great synthom, it means you should have a nice improvement with the grizzly

You can start by checking the flatness of the surfaces as i was mentioning here

If you have other thermal pastes at home... i suggest to use your worst thermal paste to do what im going to say (because is going to be wasted, using a high quality paste for this sucks because is expensive)
Fior the first test spread a very thin layer of paste (the thinnest posible) with the method of the credit card, then assemble the PS3 and do some stress tests (by playing some demanding games) for a couple of days, and take notes of the resulting temperatures in a controlled enviroment (using always the same game, starting from ambient temperature, and doing the same things in the game), after that couple of days (to allow the paste to cure and to spread) dissassemble the PS3 and keep attention at how the thermal paste looks
I dont know how to explain this with words (and without photos), but you should see the whole pasted surface have like "rifts" (because the surfaces was doing some kind of "suction" effect on it)
If you see there is some area of the spreaded paste that doesnt have any mark probably means that was not touching the other surface, thats very bad... and probably matches with the "curvatures" you found in the first test finding the flatness of the surfaces

In that case... the easy solution is to increase the pressure by bending the clamps a bit
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/h...sound-but-no-display.35685/page-2#post-315026

Or... increasing the thickness of the layer of thermal paste, with the "credit card" method i mentioned, repeat it but spreading a thicker layer... then assemble the PS3 and play with it another couple of days to see the results (again take note about all the details and compare with the temperatures you got in the previous tests)

When you are done with all this tests you will have a better understanding of how thick needs to be the layer of thermal paste for your PS3... this is when you need to cleanup very well the (bad quality) thermal paste, and use the thermal grizzly paste

Probably you already know, but the thermal pastes should not be "recycled", after you aply and attach the heatsink on top and then you remove the heatsink the only thing you should do with it is to clean it up
Otherway, if you recycle it there are going to be air bubbles, etc... that reduces the performance

For the first tests i mentioned (where is needed to dissassemble and assemble the PS3 several times) you can use bad quality thermal paste, and you can recycle it, but the last application with the grizzly needs to be NEW paste (and with the correct thickness for your PS3)
As a general rule... in the PS3 is always better to exceed a bit the thickness because the surfaces doesnt uses to be perfectly flat, this way it fills the gaps better


-----------
Edit:
Also, check if your heatsink have this problem
Is a problem that could happen in the heatsinks of the PS3 slims (and maybe the others, im not sure), what happens is one of the metal blocks of the heatsink gets "stucked" and cant move up/down

The result is the "frame" of the heatsink doesnt allows the metal block to do a good contact... is like if one of the metal block is "pulling" from the other metal block

Thank you very much for the detailed process, I understand what you mean with the rifts on the paste, I have experience from the PC. It's good that I will get used to dissasembling it agter a few tries. First time it will take me a lot. I just hope that it can run silent and the rotations of the fan will not be that loud on normal temperatures at demanding games how it behaves now, because now it makes hell of a noise after a few mins. I will try in the following period and come with a feedback, thank you again !

 

[sandungas]

Thank you very much for the detailed process, I understand what you mean with the rifts on the paste, I have experience from the PC. It's good that I will get used to dissasembling it agter a few tries. First time it will take me a lot. I just hope that it can run silent and the rotations of the fan will not be that loud on normal temperatures at demanding games how it behaves now, because now it makes hell of a noise after a few mins. I will try in the following period and come with a feedback, thank you again !

The trick of the rifts can be made without powering on the PS3, just spread a layer of paste, assemble the parts (metal shields, heatsink clamps and all the screws thick) and dissassemble it again
You can repeat it several times recycling the paste because at the end you are not going to use that paste, is just for a visual check of the rifts

But the other trick i mentioned to check the flatness with a razor blade is even better, just to show you an example, in the photo uploaded here by @feng_ye it can be seen the heatsink surfaces have "scratches"
It have a lot and we dont know his depth... but just to throw some numbers
If all the scratches have a depth of 0.05mm then is not so bad because the "imperfections" are spreaded along the surface evenly
The big problem is if we have all the scratches with a depth of 0.05mm but there is a group of scratches at the center with depths 0.07mm and 0.08mm, this creates like a "channel" or a "curvature" in the surface
This effect cant be seen in the photo, the only way to check it is with the trick of the razor blade and the lightbulb (or by scratching the surface with your nail, but the razor blade is more precise)

 

[allen_hitman]

This evening, after coming home from work, I delided both IHSs. It was the first time doing this, I saw in the end only a very superficial scratch on a corner of Cell. The console was disassemvled since last week, and I waited for the Grizzly minus pad 8 (2 mm thick) to arrive, and just came today. In the meanwhile I whatched al lot of youtube videos, a lot of NSC videos, but not only as in the end I was using a mix of thechniques (I milled until obtained 0.1 mm a piece of thin metal for Cell to cutt arround, and for RSX used the heatgun and butter knife method). It was simple the RSX. I also procured the paste Grizzly Kryonaut and a 100k potentiometer for the fan. My console has the 19 blades one. I cannot put picture here, to show the dust which was indide, the dry pastes and so. It asks for a url. Anyway, I'm doing a slow work, want to do a quality job. The original pastes were dry af, cement like, on the Cell. I will provide further news after I put it back in one piece. The heaysink is fine, I checked it, is plane. No major issues inside althought it was opened by the former owners. A few screes are missing, the wifi cable was crushed under the power supply...

 

[atreyu187]

This evening, after coming home from work, I delided both IHSs. It was the first time doing this, I saw in the end only a very superficial scratch on a corner of Cell. The console was disassemvled since last week, and I waited for the Grizzly minus pad 8 (2 mm thick) to arrive, and just came today. In the meanwhile I whatched al lot of youtube videos, a lot of NSC videos, but not only as in the end I was using a mix of thechniques (I milled until obtained 0.1 mm a piece of thin metal for Cell to cutt arround, and for RSX used the heatgun and butter knife method). It was simple the RSX. I also procured the paste Grizzly Kryonaut and a 100k potentiometer for the fan. My console has the 19 blades one. I cannot put picture here, to show the dust which was indide, the dry pastes and so. It asks for a url. Anyway, I'm doing a slow work, want to do a quality job. The original pastes were dry af, cement like, on the Cell. I will provide further news after I put it back in one piece. The heaysink is fine, I checked it, is plane. No major issues inside althought it was opened by the former owners. A few screes are missing, the wifi cable was crushed under the power supply...

Keep us updated!! Sucks having to delid but I covet my BC systems. Luckily I haven't had to go this route just yet.

 

[sandungas]

This evening, after coming home from work, I delided both IHSs. It was the first time doing this, I saw in the end only a very superficial scratch on a corner of Cell. The console was disassemvled since last week, and I waited for the Grizzly minus pad 8 (2 mm thick) to arrive, and just came today. In the meanwhile I whatched al lot of youtube videos, a lot of NSC videos, but not only as in the end I was using a mix of thechniques (I milled until obtained 0.1 mm a piece of thin metal for Cell to cutt arround, and for RSX used the heatgun and butter knife method). It was simple the RSX. I also procured the paste Grizzly Kryonaut and a 100k potentiometer for the fan. My console has the 19 blades one. I cannot put picture here, to show the dust which was indide, the dry pastes and so. It asks for a url. Anyway, I'm doing a slow work, want to do a quality job. The original pastes were dry af, cement like, on the Cell. I will provide further news after I put it back in one piece. The heaysink is fine, I checked it, is plane. No major issues inside althought it was opened by the former owners. A few screes are missing, the wifi cable was crushed under the power supply...

Be careful now, the problem you have with so many mods done together is you are not going to know the preformnace of everyone of them
The replacement of the original pastes dry and looking like cement for sure are going to have a big amount of the responsability of the preformance increment
But the others are doubtful, lets say... one of them could be -3ºC, other -2ºC... and other 0ºC (or it was a bad idea and is decreasing performance in +2ºC)
Now that you are going technical this kind of details matters and probably is something you wouold like to know after taking so many care

And btw, i would not make the mod with the fan potentiometer, for the first tests could confuse you a bit/lot... and later i would not use it either
the best thing you can do nowadays to configure the fan speeds is to buy a UARTttl-2-USB adapter. Is around 5$ and allows to connect a PC to the PS3 by soldering 3 wires in 3 "testpads" of the motherboard and reprogram a chip named syscon which contains all the settings related with temperatures, fan speeds, etc..

 

[allen_hitman]

I have bad news, now I do not know the exact symptom , but I fear my scratch on the Cell maybe was not that superficial. Short version, put it all together with new paste, pads and reassembled. I connected it, it shows the red stand-by, but when I turn it on, it becomes green like for 2 sec, I hear the fan also going on, then it shows yellow for a short bit, then beeps 3 times and flashes red...
I checked under the silicon of Cell where I saw a small scratch in the corner, and it looks like in the pictures. Edit: I cannot add a picture to show.
The confusion is, can a scratch cause this ? or a scratch can only kill it completely ? All things related to bad cooling I would exclude as I put new thermal pads and paste on both chips on the die and on the IHSs.

[/IMG]

 

[allen_hitman]

I do not know how to add a picture here, offf.. I tried to upload on imgur then to put link, I believe I prove I am a true noob
Why it has to be so complicated and not straight forward and simple as to insert a picture or paste a snip ? I feel helpless and useless at the same time