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Has anyone opened and cleaned their PS3?


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My 60GB PS3 from November 2006 is loud as hell, so I opened it a few minutes ago to clean it. It is dusty inside, but not incredibly dusty, so I'm wondering if there is something else I can do aside from replacing the thermal paste.

 

I have not yet put it back together, though, so I'm not sure how much of an effect this will have on it. Has anyone here done this? How dusty was it inside and what kind of results did you get after cleaning it? Thanks.

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24 minutes ago, Punisher5.0 said:

Repaste it. Im sure its dried up and not effective at transferring heat anymore. You will be amazed at the difference.

Okay, thanks. It's old as hell and there's no way the paste still is good. I don't actually have any thermal paste right now since I kind of impulsively did this without much planning, so for now I'll just reassemble it and not use it until I can repaste it. I'm going to Akiba on the 1st, so I'll get some paste when I'm there. I've been actively avoiding using my PS3 for at least the past 3~4 years now because I'm scared that it will overheat and become damaged, but I still do use it on extremely rare occasions. It's actually louder than my monitor's speakers at 100% volume, so it's quite annoying to use anyway.

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Well, it seems to be considerably quieter after some testing. I can actually hear the disc drive seeking now, which I couldn't before, and it doesn't overpower my monitor's speakers now. I only played for 17 minutes, though, so I'm not sure what will happen if I play for longer. I think I'll try it just to see what happens, but I still need some new thermal paste.

 

So after about 40 minutes of use, it started making a lot of noise again and I decided to turn it off. Time for new thermal paste. Hopefully that will fix it.

Edited by Steven Pendleton
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  • 2 months later...

Necroing your post a bit here, but I thought I would share a similar story.

I recently bought a really cheap CECHA01 PS3 off eBay for 40$, with a seller disclaimer close to your issue where they said it worked but was horribly loud and also heated up quickly.

Upon receiving it, I did take it apart using this video as a guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A4NIjKJZpE I could certainly live without the video's music (I muted it right away), but the video itself was I found extremely helpful.

There was not as much dust as I thought there would be, though there was some and a few tiny dust bunnies, but when I had it completely disassembled I found that the OE thermal paste was essentially dried up. As well, it appeared it had also shrunk as it dried, leaving many noticeable gaps between the dies and coolers. Another problem I found was that the cooling fan blades were actually making contact with the cooler housing; binding the blades and I expect the source of some of the operating noise.

It took a few hours of work to disassemble and clean the console, clean the CPU's and heatsinks to apply new thermal paste, create some spacers for the fan and finally reassemble everything.

But it was certainly worth the effort. It runs silent enough I cannot even hear the fan, and even after playing for a few hours it barely gets warm to the touch, let alone hot.

It is a huge pain and a fair bit of work, but I suspect you will be very happy with the end result if you do decide to replace the thermal paste in your PS3.

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Very interesting. I have never attempted to take apart a console and change something like thermal paste, which I have no idea where and what that is. But my Xbox 360 fan has been very loud for years to the point I don't want to play it sometimes oh, you could probably use the same remedy.

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On 10/5/2020 at 9:39 PM, Cafeman said:

Very interesting. I have never attempted to take apart a console and change something like thermal paste, which I have no idea where and what that is. But my Xbox 360 fan has been very loud for years to the point I don't want to play it sometimes oh, you could probably use the same remedy.

If you want the system to last then you really should find some way to get it repasted and cleaned. It sounds like its overheating.

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  • 9 months later...

I have to check that YouTube link in the near future. In my house with the large brood I have, dust is everywhere and is something that is hard to contain. My poor PS3 is in need of a cleaning, so I might just bite the bullet and do what was mentioned above. It’s the DVD/BluRay main system so it gets a lot of use that way.

 

Thanks for the info!

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