Anyone try that hair dryer trick on YLOD?

[slowmo]

sethnintendo said:

slowmo said:

bugrimmar said:

Diablerie said:

No, but I've tried the oven trick and it worked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovgIm-33k0

I won't say that yours will/could work after trying this.  At the time it sounded crazy but I did not have the money to fix my PS3 so I took the risk.

I also replaced the thermal paste on the GPU and CPU.

I even went a step further and connected a third wire between the fan and the PSU, making the fan run at top speed as soon as you turn the PS3 on.  It is loud but it is not hot (Please note that there are multiple wires on each of these parts, choosing the correct wires for the third is a must.  A google search on the process would be a wise decision). 

My PS3 is still working, 1 year and 2 months after this fix.  A 60GB week 1 purchase PS3.

wtf? you mean we can really do this kind of stuff? but why does it work? i don't understand. it seems so impossible.

Most issues with YLOD (and indeed RROD on 360) are related to failures in the solder balls underneath the CPU/GPU.  They crack or bridge contacts in some cases.  By heating the board to such an excessive amount it can if you're lucky reflow the solder (You need to get the solder to around 230 degrees).  The downside is that you're putting enormous heat through the chip you're reflowing which if you put too much can damage the chip itself. 

The hairdryer trick isn't a long term fix, in fact it's unlikely to work as a short term fix in most cases.  At best the hairdryer may get warm enough warp the board shape thus causing solder balls to make contact again for a brief while until the board returns to it's natural shape.  The oven fix mentioned in this thread would definately reflow if done correctly but you run the risk of damaging more components.  Using a heat gun rather than a hair dryer with the motherboard isolated can work too although judging temperature would be tough.  Finally you can get a professional to repair it who would reflow using either a irda/hot air rework station.

Yep that is basically it.  I used to work at Flextronics and I did numerous positions such as basic tester, ECN operator, and BGA operator.   While I was doing BGA that is basically what we did.  We had these huge machines that had different shapes of nozzles for different size chips.  It was basically like a blow drier but more accurate.  The bottom (where you place the board, we used little metal things that we would put on the edges up the board to prop it up because if it layed on the bottom heater it would warp the board) would heat up and the heat from the nozzle would make the solder flow (we had to paste the solder on using stencil type things).  I am not too sure what the exact temp were but they were probably in the range of 230 or more.  We then had to check each board (Cisco) using a x-ray machine to make sure the solder was connected at each point and no bridges on the chip we replaced.  We removed and put new chips on using this method.  The hardest part was actually putting the solder paste down correctly so it wouldn't bridge/etc since the stencils we used were sometimes warped due to use.  The whole removing and putting on chips was pretty simple once you got the pasting down.

That was as basic as I could get while still being informative lol.  I envy you're reballing experience as I never worked with good enough equipment to reball and reinstall a chip.  The solder generally has a melting point around 230 degrees for the 360 and PS3 due to the fact it's "lead free", older solder required less temperature to melt but was obviously more toxic hence it's ban.  You of course would have your machines set to a higher temperature as you lose some heat transferring to the board/chip.  Generally speaking you'd have over 300 degrees in your pre heater below and if you're on hot air the temperature depends upon your air flow.  Reflowing boards would be so much easier if I'd had a good xray machine to confirm the reflow!