My Problem

I feel asleep watching a movie on my ps3 one night. The ext day I went to work and came home ad began to tell my wife how I need to back everything up on my ps3 on a disk drive. As soon as I said that she told me she was having problems with turning it on. I thought to myself "women"...but when I grid to turn it on the light blinked a few times,made a noise and that's when I saw it...that yellow light of death...I was devastated lol

My Fix

I felt like I was doing surgery on one of my babies. I have a first generation ps3 so I had it when it first came out and this is the first problem I've had with it. But I followed the instructional video step by step. And even though I didn't have a video to show me how to put it back together lol I figured it out on my own (with the exception of a few screws). Now my ps3 works like new! Don't want to sound like one of those corny infomercials but...Thank you ifixit.com!

My Advice

Follow the instructions step by step and you should do just fine. You don't have to be an expert with electronics to fix it!

My Problem

I was in the middle of gearing up for the NHL playoffs with NHL 12 and my PS3 shut off right in the middle of a game. I found that couldn't turn the system on to even eject my game.

My Fix

I had a just a little difficulty with the guides as they often spin the system boards and show them from an altogether different camera angles but after meticulously following the guide (and incidentally breaking the BluRay drive cable clip off the board) I was able to successfully fix my defunct PS3 by reflowing the onboard chips with a heat gun. The parts sent were great quality and the fan now runs at a much quieter rate I would assume due to the quality ceramic thermal paste.

The old thermal pads and some electrical tape worked wonders to hold the Blu Ray cable in place and I don't blame iFixit for my fat fingers breaking the clip for a second.

My Advice

Just be very patient and study each portion of the well diagrammed albeit a little confusing process. Be patient as there are a lot of parts to remove but nothing here that anyone even reading a guide on this site shouldn't try.

My Problem

Suddenly got the YLOD in the middle of playing Mortal Kombat. I had over 4 years of data on my PS3 and refused to take this laying down.

My Fix

The repair is lengthy. Prepare to invest time to this project. I took this slowly and in the end took around 4 hours!!!

My Advice

There are A LOT of screws. Be prepared with some way to organize them.

My Problem

Brother's PS3

My Fix

Worked for about 2 hrs of gameplay. Lost video. Rebooted and got YLOD. Not giving up yet.

My Advice

40GB was different from guide but very similar.

My Problem

My PS3 was agoner

My Fix

Following the guides it was a snap, I can't believe I actually did this on my own

My Advice

Definitely have a screw tray to keep them organized and compartmentalized

My Problem

I ignored the multiple red lights and beeps that my PS3 would suddenly turn off with for a few weeks / months. For some reason, it didn't cross my mind that one of my best friends might be dying a terrible heat death. Sadly, one day (in the middle of Uncharted 2), he gave out on me and turned all....dead. The PS3 shut off as it had done many times before, but this time I was unable to simply turn it back on. Upon trying, I received the dreaded Yellow Light of Death (YLOD). Of course, I needed to rescue my buddy (also, my data was at stake!), so I scoured the Internet for a solution....that brought me to iFixit.com.

My Fix

I took a LONG time to repair the system, since I obsessively went through cleaning EVERYTHING. I think I took about 5 hours one night opening it up, clearing out dust and (cat?) hair and IPA-ing the crap out of it.

After a few days of of gorgeous PS3-guts art in my apartment, I spent another 5 or so hours taking my time and putting the thing back together. The guide was great, but I did have to mix in some info from the 'Gilksy' repair videos on YouTube, especially for reassembly.

I was very meticulous about thermal paste application and also placement and orientation of the thermal pads. It has been ~3 days since the repair and I have had no indication that anything is amiss. The system works like a dream.....and the fan no longer sounds like a cat in a blender.

My Advice

Best of luck, noble soul! Please search around for some very good (detailed) reassembly instructions and, I would recommend, buy the iFixit repair kit. Especially since you get a heat gun, the price is good and the addition of everything you need makes it a convenient and fair deal.

As for what to do once your PS3 is back on, there is no guarantee that it will last, so *back up your data.....all of it.....ASAP*. There is a lot of info online on this subject, but the gist of it is that you'll need a FAT32-formatted storage device that can hold all of your PS3 data (you'll need to use third-party formatting software if the device is over 32GB and/or you are running Windows 7).

BEST OF LUCK!

My Problem

YLOD - could not keep the PS3 powered on

My Fix

Repairing the PS3 didn't go as smoothly as I would have wanted it to, but after about 3 hours, I had a working PS3. Not to bad for a beginner.

My Advice

It would have been allot easier if I had pictures of the screws along with the dimensions when reinstalling everything. My PS3 was also the first generation to come out as was a little different in the beginning of the repair.

My Problem

I got the YLOD last week and we were already halfway thought the Skyrim and had no backup!

My Fix

My husband thought there was no chance but we worked together and got the non backwards compatible 40 GB back up and were able to watch a blue ray movie and finish Portal 2.

My Advice

The video is for a 60 GB backward compatible, so we had to go to youtube for the 40 gig tear-down. Also, the ifixit person did not say how far the heat gun should be from the board, so we just guessed about 8 inches on that.

My Problem

Some friends recently experienced the YLOD after overheating. They tried to repair it but couldn't discover what happened.

My Fix

The guide was right on! I really liked how the pictures were framed well enough so I can always tell where I am on this huge device. The hardest part was replacing the PS3 top cover.

My Advice

Both the guide and the guide video place a lot of emphasis on making the motherboard level while heating the GPU and CPU. My home is not very well-made and I don't think any of the floors are level. I took a trip to the hardware store for a $2.00 circular bubble level. I recommend this extra tool because a level setting is so important for a proper repair.

My Problem

My PS3 stopped working and after Googling the symptoms, turned up the Yellow Light of Death. Searching for that turned up the ifixit repair kit and guide.

My Fix

The repair took 2 hours and 40 minutes, but the step-by-step guide was extremely thorough and broke it down to simplified steps. At the end of the day, the unit was rebuilt and the repair worked. I honestly can't believe it actually worked given my concerns about lack of any experience repairing electronics, working with a heat gun, and the potential for shorting out a board due to a static charge. But it worked.

My Advice

1) Separate and keep track of all the various screws. I bundled them and labelled them with the step # so that i knew what went where as I worked backwards.

2) Re-running some of the cables was more complicated and novices like myself could have benefitted from a re-assembly pic or two for the more complicated steps.