We all dread the day that our system fails us. It seems this console generation has basically accepted that their consoles will eventually over heat and be rendered useless. Xbox 360 owners know the pitfalls of this better than most. Now it seems PS3 owners are running into the same problems more and more.
My 60gig PS3 went down less than a week ago. I knew it was coming. The fan had been running on high like it was its job for about two months straight. My warranty has long since been over and when the system finally gave me a yellow light followed by a flashing red… it was official.
When this happens to someone who doesn’t have a warranty, you have two basic options:
1) Pony up 150$ to Sony and have them mail you a coffin (I call this the “Sony up” method). You will then either receive your system back in the mail after its been repaired, OR you will get a refurbed/new system. The problem with a refurb is that it will NOT contain your save games or even be compatible with your original HDD.. so you will lose anything you didn’t/couldn’t back up.
2) You can fix it yourself. YEP you can. It may seem daunting if you are not an electronics expert, but that shouldn’t be an issue if you follow the guide I used.
I have never built a computer by myself. I have never messed around with a mother board or any internal PC parts in my life. Despite these hindrances, I was still able to follow a guide made by a very generous British bloke named Colin Gilks. HERE is his step by step guide on how to reflow the solder on your GPU and CPU.
To prove that it works, I made a short video documenting parts of my repair:
Where there is a will there is a way.
If you find this method helpful, please donate to Gilksy’s PayPal account to help support his efforts: HERE
Site Owner and Administrator. 
Congrats Paul!
Last summer as a preventive measure i took my 60 Gig apart and removed the original thermal paste and re-applied Arctic Silver.
I used a lot of bowls to keep track of all the pieces,(i also used same video series as yourself) My PS3 may never have got the YLOD but i thought it was worth the effort.
One question, Were you surprised by the large amount or perhaps small amount of dirt inside your console? (mine was really clean inside and i was
quite surprised by that, after hearing others talk about how dirty theirs were.
Now it looks like if you want a 2nd or 3rd job your good to go LOL.
Yeah, there was a TON of dirt. I don’t think you can really avoid some of it. I vacuum my system at least once a week and I found dirt in most of the unit. There wasn’t enough that it would have been causing excess heat.. but there was enough to make me double check that I got it all.