Guest Writer: Fixing My Dead PS3

I love getting guest articles, people are always very nice when they email the article over and it’s always nice to see what our community is capable of. This week ashw92 graced my inbox with this article on his PS3′s failure woes and his repair process.

Warning: Attempting the repairs described in this article will void your warranty and your rights under the Sale of Goods Act.

The day has finally arrived, I was well aware it was coming at some point but it doesn’t make it any less difficult. My beloved 60GB ‘Big-Boned’ PS3 has, after 2 years and 10 months of ownership and regular use, become victim to a fatal fault – The Blinking Red Light of Death, as it is affectionately known. For those of you not encyclopaedic on PS3 faults and issues, the BRLOD occurs whilst the console is in use.

The console bleeps at you three times and the red light flashes until the on/off button is pressed at which point it goes back to being on standby. Probably like some of you I’d had my console do this before and always assumed I’d been traversing Little Big Planet or orchestrating the fall of Olympus for far too long that day and she had got too warm.

However this time was a little different, my girlfriend had taken over the reins of the PS3 for the afternoon to partake in some mindless chaos in God of War 3, just as she was removing the second leg of a certain irritating mythological messenger the PlayStation loudly proclaimed its three beeps and sat there, blinking at me.

Irritated and slightly concerned about the PlayStation I let it sit for a couple of hours to cool down and then put it back on and fulfilled my mild paranoia by doing a full backup, which I do every time it seems to be having some problems. The backup took around 2 hours and the slightly overweight console behaved perfectly, assuming the problem was solved I called it quits for the night and thought little more of it.

The next day after getting in from work my Dualshock was plucked from my eagerly awaiting hands once more by my other half. Disappointed at not being able to play myself but glad that I have someone who shares my interests, I sat myself down on the sofa and watched her load up God of War again so she could redo the section that was lost the night before.

The PlayStation started up like it had done hundreds if not thousands of times before and nothing seemed untoward until she attempted to load her save from last night. I knew this time it was not an overheating problem as my rotund friend had been on for little over a couple of minutes so I presumed it was a fault with God of War or the save was corrupt.

I restarted the console again and this time attempted to load up Wipeout HD from my recent PS+ subscription and before I even had the chance to launch the game the blinking red lights reappeared. Clutching entirely at straws I turned it off at the back unplugged all leads and let it sit for half an hour too cool and then turned it back on only to be greeted by the Blinking Red Light of Death before the console even turned on.

So as I said earlier, the day had arrived, the PlayStation had died. I knew in advance that some of my important saves were (in my opinion, foolishly) copy protected meaning I would have to start using Ezio as a killing machine, wreaking havoc in Paradise city and becoming a world famous drummer all over again. This for me was an issue, as much as I enjoyed the games greatly first time through I had put a lot of time and effort into finishing those games and did not want it snatched out from under my fingertips.

I therefore committed myself to making my PlayStation to work again. I had seen the episode of Watchdog where they placed the circuit boards in specially built ovens to repair the faults and so assumed there had to be a DIY version. I scoured the World Wide Web in search of a way to do it myself but some of the things I found were questionable at best until a came across a site by a professional PS3 repairman whose website features step by step videos, text and picture guides along with full support and a help forum to repair all manner of PS3 faults, but at a cost.

To me it appeared much more likely to succeed and more legitimate than a lot of what I had encountered so I bit the bullet and bought it.

The guide cited an expected time to repair at between two and four hours depending on experience so I enlisted my dad’s help and got to work on it at around 1 in the afternoon allowing us plenty of time, or so I thought. After copious amounts of unscrewing and applying gentle pressure we finally had stripped away the case, the power supply, the on/off switch and eject button, the Blu-ray drive, the card reader, the fan and the heat sink leaving us only the circuit board to try to repair. We were advised to use a heat gun on certain areas of the motherboard to melt the solder and then allow it to solidify back in place.

I had my doubts as to whether this would actually work but I thought if nothing else it was a laugh and a bit of father-son bonding. After reading ahead and shooting through the doors at Maplin just as they were trying to shut to get some thermal compound we were ready to put the console back together. A further hour and two leftover screws later we had it in bits again to hunt the location of the spare screw holes. After tracking them down to being beneath the Blu-ray drive she was finally fully assembled with no broken parts, bonus! We had our doubts that a simple and cheap fix such as this would do a job Sony charge a hefty amount for but remained cautiously optimistic nonetheless.

I carried the violated but now dust free 60GB monster through into the lounge and plugged in the HDMI and power cables and flicked the switch at the back. A familiar red standby light reassured me that I had not mortally wounded it to the point where it wouldn’t do a thing. Now for the moment of truth, the single moment that 6 hours of deconstruction, melting and reconstruction had boiled down to.

I dramatically lowered my finger onto the on/off button almost in slow motion and heard the fan whir into life and low and behold I was greeted with the wondrous start up tune of a fully functioning PlayStation 3.

Since that fateful moment my gaming machine has continued to function just fine although now I allow more sensible breaks and power it down more often to keep it cool. So there ladies and gentlemen I have proved that it is possible to bring a deceased PS3 back from the ashes.