Red light on PS3

This is a short guide on how to fix the most common errors you may have experienced with your PS3. These errors are usually a red light on PS3 or the yellow light of death. Now both errors are due to a motherboard error. Fortunately, this does not necessarily mean that your PS3 is completely broken. There is a fairly simple solution.

The first thing to do is see if there is a loose cable, and if not, try restarting your console. Then try to remove all cables except the power cord, and then reconnect them. Hopefully that’s it. But if it still doesn’t work, which may be the case, proceed to the next stage.

Unfortunately the CPU and GPU got disconnected on the motherboard, causing the red light on PS3 or the yellow light of death and you will have to go in to do a repair. Don’t worry, this is not difficult and requires absolutely no electronics skills.

You will have to take your console apart and take it apart to make it work on the motherboard. You will need a Phillips screwdriver and a flat head screwdriver to do this. Make sure to clean up any lint and dust that may have gotten in while you’re doing it, it’s a good opportunity to do this type of maintenance. You will know when you have located the motherboard. It’s a no-brainer, since it’s a big green circuit board. It is the only one there is.

In the middle, you will see two square circuit areas that are covered in a blue-gray paste. These are the heat sinks. You should clean this paste with rubbing alcohol (which can be found in most computer stores) or turpentine. I found that using an alcohol-based cleansing wipe works too.

Once both are completely clean, you need to get a heat gun and put the setting at 315 degrees C. Since I didn’t have one, I used a hair dryer on the maximum setting. Then you should heat the entire board, front and back, for a couple of minutes, using the heat gun about an inch above the board. Then concentrate the heat on the heat sinks and surrounding circuits for approximately 25 seconds each. Those times are for the heat gun. A hair dryer might not be that hot, so I would focus on the board for about 10 minutes and then the individual pieces of the circuits for about a minute each. This worked for me. When done, leave the motherboard alone for 15 minutes. DO NOT TOUCH or you will have to start over.

This part of the process is repair. What you are doing is heating the solder on the faulty circuit enough that a repair can be made to make a better connection again. During the time the solder is cooling, it is setting. If you touch the board during this time, it could go wrong again and you would have to start over.

After 15 minutes, you need to reapply fresh thermal paste to the heat sinks. Remember that blue-gray thing you cleaned? You should use a suitable thermal paste, such as Arctic Silver 5. Again, you can find it in most computer stores and it doesn’t cost much. But, for a temporary fix, you can use toothpaste (yes, I said toothpaste) to act as thermal paste. But I repeat, this is purely a temporary fix. Just smear a small amount thinly on the heat sinks evenly with a credit card or something smaller and flat. You should almost be able to see through the paste. Do this on both heat sinks.

Put your PS3 back together and you’re done. Turn on your PS3 and you should find that the red light on PS3 or the yellow light of death, whatever the issue you had, has been resolved.

So that’s the end of my guide. If you follow this, you could save between $ 150 and $ 200 on Sony’s repair bill. You can also make sure you don’t lose your hard drive data as Sony would send you a refurbished one with a blank hard drive. You can get your machine back up and running in less than an hour instead of waiting up to six weeks.

Hope this page was helpful in fixing your PS3 flashing red light issue.

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