PS3 overheating and shutting itself down - broken fan?

[realpoketendonl]

I own a fat model PS3 - the kind without backwards compatibility. It was a gift from my cousin who never used it. Part of the reason for that is that the fan could get very loud, to the point of being louder than the tv. I quickly noticed this happening when the game that was being played got heavy to run. With games like SingStar it's fine most of the time, but during boss battles in Bayonetta or at any point when playing GTA V it could go crazy and make an insane amount of noise.

I've been wanting to get a can of compressed air and clean the system for a while now, but so far I haven't done that yet. However, some problems have started occuring a few days ago with the system. My brother was playing GTA V when the console just shut itself off. When rebooted it would give a message that save data may be damaged. It would scan for errors and fix them if they were found, which could take up to 2 or 3 hours according to the message. It was done in 5 minutes. In the last few days, this has happened multiple times, and when rebooted it would either give the save data message or it would say the system overheated.

I have never had this problem before. It started two days ago, and has been going on ever since. You can play for a little while, and then it stops. The only game tested so far is GTA V, but I'm planning on playing some Bayonetta tomorrow. I'll update this message if it crashes on that too.

I'm pretty sure the fan is broken due to all the noise it makes. I'm going to get myself some compressed air and attempt to clean the console with it as soon as possible (I'll blow into the fan from the outside, but I'm not sure I'm actually going to open it up as of now, since I have no experience with that and I don't want to wreck it). Has anyone ever had this problem before? Should I get the fan replaced? I'll update this message when I get more info.

[davifus]

I'm sure Dashv can throw down some knowledge.

http://vgcollect.com/forum/index.php/topic,5183.0.html

[realpoketendonl]

Thanks for posting it! I'm glad he fixed it, but it looks like he has a lot of experience with repairs like this. I don't, I never did anything worse than screwing the bottom case of my laptop, and I'm not planning to start now because I'm too scared I'll accidentally brick the console. I guess I should try and see whether I can get it checked out somewhere in my area. I will look into that post though, maybe there's something in there I can try.

[maximo310]

I had a fat model like this; worked for a year and then went kaput. Even after tearing it apart multiple times, cleaning dust out, and adding new thermal paste, it wouldn't boot most of the time, and when it did, there were a ton of graphical  errors on screen, so I replaced it with a working slim.  You could try to get it fixed by a professional, but from what I've seen it won't permently fix the problem, those models are not designed to last because of the design.

[aliensstudios]

I had the exact same thing happen, the system would sound like an airplane lifting off then shut off. It turned out the heat sensor in the system was shot.

[rayne315]

this may sound dumb but for a simple "fix" you could try just removing the front plastic and have an additional desk fan directed towards it and run it like that. Their used to be a place by my high school called "Midnight Gaming" that would do this with every system to allow them to run 24/7. All it really does is allow for more airflow/more places for heat to escape. of course doing it like this means you have to place it so it will not accumulate dust or just clean the dust every week or whenever needed.

[tripredacus]

Regular consumer fans (as mentioned in the previous post) can have a bad side effect of adding noise into your setup. So your YMMV when it comes to using those types.

I've opened a PS3 before, so if you be very careful and watch some videos first. Make sure they are for your specific model. Be aware that some items are attached via a zif ribbon cable. For example, once you unscrew the ODD, you need to make sure you carefully disconnect the ribbon cable. If you don't, you can break the socket! I had worked on a PS3 that was previously repaired and this happened.

[retrogemcollector]

I hope it actually is the fan, BUT it is most certainly a YLOD. You have to open it up, clean the shitty thermal paste, reflow it and apply Arctic Silver thermal paste to it. I am a PS3 hardware collector and out of 4 of my 60GB 3 had that issue. The problem as you might know by now is that the CPU/GPU chip don't get proper heat removal (because of that cheap thermal paste) and the heat goes directly to the soldering, resulting the chip getting partially disconnected from the motherboard. So as I said hopefully is the fan but there is a huge chance that it's more than that.

[dashv]

It does sound like overheating. The compressed air might help. But it could also make it worse. Chunks of dust hurtling around in the closed up system could make things go from bad to worse.

Opening it up and giving it a good cleaning is really the best way and it shouldn't be played anymore until that's done. Otherwise the system will eventually melt the solder on the CPU pins rendering it dead.

I didn't know anything about PS3 repair until I pulled mine open.

As other suggested I watched some videos for my specific model and followed a step by step "ifixya" guide with pictures online.

All the repair stuff I've learned by just rolling up my sleeves and giving it a go.

If the system isn't working and it's out of warranty there's really nothing left to loose and everything to gain if you are successful.

That said, if you are really really nervous you could send it out somewhere. But it will likely cost half what a new console will cost. And the fix will only last 3-4 years.

[realpoketendonl]

I dissasembled it partially. after taking out the power supply I chickened out, since I was confused about the wiring attached to the blu-ray player and I was too afraid of breaking it. I did clean everything using compressed air up until there, and I also blew the fan with the air through the gaps that I had cleared out to reach it. After putting it back together I played some Bayonetta (the final (and probably hardest to run) level, and the fan didn't even go up to its highest level.
However, then my little brother started playing GTA V. I wasn't in the room, but he claimed it kept shutting down after 5 minutes of playtime. Now he took the PS3 out of the cabinet it was standing in and he claims that the fan output on the back now feels cold and that all the problems are solved. I didn't feel like the fan was short on room to release heat in that cabinet, but who knows. I guess we now just have to take it out of the cabinet whenever we play GTA V, since Bayonetta runned fine (and other than those two games and occasionally Tomb Raider or The Sims we never play on it anyway). If it goes wrong again maybe I'll open it up again, but at least it seems to be fixed for now. Thanks for all your help and ideas though! 

[dashv]

I dissasembled it partially. after taking out the power supply I chickened out, since I was confused about the wiring attached to the blu-ray player and I was too afraid of breaking it. I did clean everything using compressed air up until there, and I also blew the fan with the air through the gaps that I had cleared out to reach it. After putting it back together I played some Bayonetta (the final (and probably hardest to run) level, and the fan didn't even go up to its highest level.
However, then my little brother started playing GTA V. I wasn't in the room, but he claimed it kept shutting down after 5 minutes of playtime. Now he took the PS3 out of the cabinet it was standing in and he claims that the fan output on the back now feels cold and that all the problems are solved. I didn't feel like the fan was short on room to release heat in that cabinet, but who knows. I guess we now just have to take it out of the cabinet whenever we play GTA V, since Bayonetta runned fine (and other than those two games and occasionally Tomb Raider or The Sims we never play on it anyway). If it goes wrong again maybe I'll open it up again, but at least it seems to be fixed for now. Thanks for all your help and ideas though! 

The fan is on the bottom. So that's where all the dust gathers. If you only took off the top you probably displaced some dust but most likely not all.

The fan blowing cold air is actually really bad. It means the heat pipe is not drawing the heat out to the fan for proper cooling. Usually this is because the paste on the heat sinks has evaporated or gone bad.

At this point the CPU or GPU (or both) are basically cooking themselves every time you play.

You might want to get another PS3 and transfer your games/saves while you still can.

Or get PS Plus and back up your important saves to the cloud.

Don't bother backing up to a USB drive. You can only restore a drive to the same PS3 it was backed up from.