My 3 years and 8 months old PS3 fat 80GB is dying, still play the majority of games (PS All Star Beta, Rayman Origins, RE6) but it turns itself off in the middle of gameplay with other games like Uncharted 3, LittleBigPlanet 2 or NFL Blitz.

Should I sell it as is and buy a new super slim or should I try to fix it myself (help please)?

I would try and snag one of those rumored Black Friday slims. $199.99 for a 250GB with Uncharted 1/2 + Infamous 1/2. That's crazy.

It's dying. Get some cash toward a new system while you can.

it's probably overheating... have you ever cleaned it?

You can take it apart, the fats get obsurd amount of dust that screws airflow... reapply the thermal grease. 

But it takes a long time, if you're not careful you can screw it up. And if overheating isn't the problem or it's too far gone, this isn't going to fix anything and it might be harder to resell to gamestop etc because you broke the seal (if you already haven't).

The safe thing is to trade it in, and if for some reason they don't let you resell (I don't think this will happen). Then clean, etc.

I think its overheating because it works normal with most games and for blu ray movies, I'm going to try to clean it and reaply the thermal paste.

Thank you ishiki and everybody else for your help.

If you do get a new ps3 and sell the old 1 make sure you transfer all your data to the new ps3 and deactivate your accounts on old fat ps3 before you sell it.

You need to use the ethernet cable transfer option in the settings menu, its the only way to transfer all your data to a new ps3 (backing your data up to an external HDD is only for restoring the data on the ps3 that you backed up on, you cant back it up on an entirely different ps3)

If your fat ps3 dies before you do this transfer the only way to get the data back is if you fix the ps3, if you try putting the fat ps3 hard drive into another ps3 it will require a reformat (thus loosing its data)

sauce: personal experience and extensive research for when i did it

You can transfer some saves, Pictures and stuff via usb dongle, (I have 2 PS3's one in my room and one in the living room).

However some saves are protected, some saves you have to login to your PSN name (which shouldn't be a problem) .

I think they do it to keep people from exploiting achievements/trophies, but it's annoying.

Go to the 6:00 mark of this video....this is probably your issue, and your PS3 can probably be saved if you do it today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gskekVdmJMk

Also I can possibly give you more info, but just out of curiosity, what STATE do you live in, Rafux?

Thanks for the help, I live in Ecuador, South America.

A late follow up to my problem: After cleaning dust inside and reapplying the thermal paste my PS3 continued with the same problem so today I sold it as is for 130$ which is all profit since I won my PS3 for free from gametrailers almost 4 years ago.

Now if I only live in USA I'll snatch one of those 199$ bundles.