The Adventures of a Dumpster PS4

Good job, man that mobo was a nightmare

good job

I quickly found out why the fan was going nuts - the heatsink wasn't even in contact with the APU, you can tell by the spread pattern. The paste turned entirely into Play-doh due to intense heat and the sheer amount of dust. I'm quite proud of this one - there was no need to pull out the iron or the heat gun this time, but the restoration was rather relaxing and the "faults" were fairly obvious.

nice work bro.

Good work. It never ceases to amaze me how fn disgusting some people are. You can tell that the original owner was a dirty slob, and it makes you wonder what their house looks like lol.

One of the worst I've seen, that's for sure. Dust I can handle, but I've never seen rust on anything that wasn't at least 10+ years old and stored in an attic or a damp cellar. No biggy though, I did manage to pull both cooling plates, the fan, the drives and the power supply from the "remains", so I'm certain they will revive more systems in the future.

Cool! Good job! Repairing stuff always look so rewarding

Where are these magic dumpsters people live near?
Best I can get is the odd bit of wood to pull nails from to build things with, and was delighted earlier this year to find a broken bakelite radio and some broken headphones.

I really don't know what to tell you, @FAST6191 - recycling is a cruel mistress. In my case people simply chuck their old electronics in my general direction since they know I'll probably make use of them, and it's easier than having to carry them all the way to the dump. This is especially true when you work in that kind of industry and certain things simply turn out to be "not viable for economic repair". I'm by no means a hoarder, I can distinguish between trash and stuff that has promise, but admittedly I do have a soft spot for collecting consoles and computers. Maybe it's just my area. I was walking through town a few months back and I saw a PS3 Phat just laying there in the middle of the street on a pile of recycling bags - if it wasn't soaked in rain water I would've picked it up in a heartbeat. Strikes me right through the heart, I tell ya - it looked like it was in good nick.

"Tales from the dumpster", that series would be a hit.

Not a bad shout!

Holy hell, is that the same fan as what's in a PS3?

Someone get Noctua up here in these consoles, for Christ's sake!

Still, I wouldn't mind, after discovering my phat PS3 is not one of the phat PS3s (as in, the ones that use software emulation for the PS2 even though Sony probably could've just gave the Emotion CPU a shell that worked over USB or something to add hardware BC for people who wanted it kind of like with the memory card adapter they made for the system? Or is there some logistical reason there I'm not considering as to why that wouldn't work over USB?)

The original PS3 has the biggest fan you've ever seen on a piece of electronics, it's almost as big as the system itself and it's never been the issue - the issue is the paste used between the heat spreaders and the dies which can be fixed by delidding them and replacing it with something decent. I did just that on one of my units last week, to great effect.

As for the software emulation, it's actually remarkably good - very few games have any issues on "soft BC" Phats, and although they are less valuable per se, they're perfectly serviceable and desirable systems. My Phat is a hybrid BC unit and I'm yet to encounter a single problem with it after a thorough refurbishing, Sony did a good job with their EE emulator.

Absolutely, but then I'm left wondering why I didn't get a slim PS3 (one of the models that can be downgraded, already modded, or is still on a OFW below 3.56) as opposed to a PS3 in a George Foreman grill with the Spider-Man font on top, with a fan that's louder than my Lasko tower heater, no less!?

I mean, have a listen to this!



And that still doesn't sound anything like it does when you're in the same room as opposed to a recording!

I've attached my PS3 delid to the OG post, I used a scalpel for the initial incision, but after discovering it was a little too thick and introduced the danger of scratching the substrate, I fashioned a delidding blade out of... a soda can. Just thin enough, and soft enough to bend in contact with any hard surface, as opposed to scratching it. Most people would use an oil painting knife, which is probably safer, but my result was satisfactory. I didn't see a point in buying a tool to use just once on a system that I got for free.

Using a hairdryer to warm up the chips a little also helped (I used a hairdryer since I didn't want to melt the solder with my heat gun), and I did experiment with using some solvent (WD-40 - non-conductive, attacks silicone) to dissolve the glue, but I think that just made a mess for me to clean up later and I would skip it entirely next time.

Once the CELL adhesive was cut and the RSX was loosened on the edges, I used a flathead against the underside of the IHS'es and popped them off, taking care not to touch the PCB or the chips - easy peasy. Once done, I washed off the mess with a generous helping of alcohol, wiped it clean and dryed it with the hairdryer, a little bit at a time so as to not introduce too much heat, but to still blow out any moisture from all the crevices and from under the chips.



Then I scraped off the excess dry paste from the memory and the dies, applied NT-H2, put the IHS'es back on, then re-applied the paste to the top and reassembled the console.

The system is basically silent now unless it's under very heavy stress, you'd be surprised by how effective this method is. It's like a new console.

See, as much as I love the PS3, unless I had a lot of time and money on my hands, I'd have to dedicate an entire day to something like this, or so it feels like to me. Not to mention the very likely possibility for me to damage the system due to a lack of experience in repairing electronics unlike one of my older brothers who restored a Neo-Geo board's Z80 and sound chip (can't remember if those are the same) by desoldering the old one and replacing it with a socket to make faulty chip replacement easier down the road.

I was considering giving the system to him for free since I'm sure he'd have better luck than I with the system, and also because he never had a PS3 back in the day due to having a 360 (that he had to send in for repairs at least three times). Or, IDK, maybe I'll ask/pay him to get rid of the old solder and all that.

If I were to keep it after replacing the solder, a part of me wants to put the system in a better case. Smaller might be asking a lot, but something more conducive to better cooling performance would be the main point.

Lots of ideas and thoughts, too little free time to bother trying to put them to action over other things.

It took me approx. two hours from unscrewing the first screw to screwing in the last one. The delidding can be nerve wrecking, but even just replacing the stock compound with something better and no delid greatly reduces the noise levels. There comes a point in the life of those systems where maintenance is a must, sadly. Think of it this way - you didn't get YLOD yet, and it's been years. You two are meant for each other.

This is really cool. Years back, I did a similar consolidation between two GBA SPs (one with a busted shell, one with a busted screen), and just last month, I finally replaced the shell and screen for what remained. Great feeling!

I really think this is how "recycling" should work by default, I'd like to think that we get the most out of our eWaste, but I know that's just not the case. Back when I was a child electronics were exceedingly expensive and not considered "perishable" like they are now. If you got a Game Boy for Christmas, you treated that thing like it was made out of solid gold because you knew you weren't getting another one next year, and if it did break, you'd replace whatever was broken. If people have stacks of broken consoles, it only makes sense to me that someone should take five corpses and make one working unit - it will bring joy to someone, surely. Now, due to the nature of my work I cannot profit from digging in the eWaste bin, but I sure can use the hardware myself, or give it away to friends and family, which I have done in the past. Always brings a smile to my face.

I remember when I was like 15, my parents sent me over to a family friend to help him fix laptops. He had just bought a bunch of IBM thinkpads online (like 30 of them or so) that were all busted, and hence very cheap. And we took them apart and mixed/matched working parts to make as many functioning units as possible, with the purpose of giving them to charity.

I didn't appreciate what we were doing at the time because I was a dumb teenager, but in retrospect, that stuff is super fucking cool.