Chosen Solution
I recently took home a PlayStation 3 from my mums opshop that was donated ( which I immediately thought was weird anyway, why would you give away a PlayStation?) to test it out and see if it works. We got home, I plugged it all in and everything, but then it went green, flashed yellows then beeped red until I turned it off. I googled it, found out it was YLOD, but then got confuesd with all the talk about buying stuff ( I know, I’m a cheapo lol) so is there anyway I can fix the PlayStation without spending big bucks?? Thanks
@gabskebabs possibly. It will most likely be a short term fix but it may work for you. The red flashing light and the console down due to excessive heat. I believe what you are starting to see is the classic symptom of a very near YLOD. I would either try and repair it myself, using the guides from here Yellow Light of Death Repair and this part or get someone to do it for you. Here is a very “quick and dirty” explanation of what causes most of the YLOD/RROD. It is not always a failure of the solder balls which connect the Flip Chip BGA package to the motherboard. It does happen and you can see why [ http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=223|on here] More commonly however is that the failure is due to the chip design itself.
As you can see the “bumps’ are what actually connects the die to the substrate to make the chip complete. If these bumps fail the die does no longer make contact either he substrate and thus no contact with the circuit board. The chip has failed.
Here you can see the space where the bump has failed and no longer makes contact. We are talking microns of space here. So a bit of pressure on the top of the die potentially close the gap. Same with a reflow, it may allow some of material from the bump to reshape and starting to make contact again. The heating of / cooling of the chip during use is what will eventually cause it to fail again.
