Just wanted to share my experience.  Was sad back in October when my OG PS3 FAT 60gb model finally got the YLOD.  That was a heartbreakin moment.  I mean.. I got a decent collection of ps1, ps2 and ps3 titles collected over the years, and I loved the fact that I could play all of them on my Fatty.  Heck, i remember selling my ps2 as soon as i got my ps3 because of backward capabilities  and knowing that I could continue playing my Tekken Tag, ICO, SOTC, Viewtiful Joe, The Warriors, etc.. Also, my wife likes to upload and keep her camera pics onto the HDD on my Fatty (which I had upgraded to a TB HDD). 

All was well.. even though I knew it could eventually happen (the YLOD thing).  Anyways, while on a business trip to Chicago, I get a phone call from my wife saying while watching Netflix, the ps3 just shut down on her.  didn't know why.. but said it wouldn't turn on anymore.  I almost cried.. I just wanted to get back home and take care of my baby (my ps3, not my wife) and to find out what exactly happened.  Lo and behold.. i get home, turn on my ps3 and it's a quick, beep beep, two green lights, a yellow light, and then red.  Over and over, beep, beep, green light, green light, yellow light, red light. 

Like everyone else did, i scoured the internet looking for fixes.  hair dryer/freezer trick??.. warping may happen.. uhmmm no.. oven trick (similar to hair dryer trick)?? uhmmm no.. and so on and so on.  hell.. i didn't want to do more damage to my fatty for just a possibility of an extended week of life, if that much.  anyways, got to hearing about reflowing and reballing.  well.. i was skeptical, but claims were that reflowing, and especially reballing could give my fatty new life.  Anyways.. was looking about possibility of finding someone who could reflow or reball the chips on the motherboard, and WHAM!  it hit me.. one of my collegues holds a master in electrical engineering.  I talked to him about it and he said he does circuit board fixes (tvs, laptops, iphones, etc.) as a side job, and he had a reflow machine at his house.  He also said he could do reballing as long as he had the chip templates.  I was estatic..

Anyways, cutting to the chase, he himself bought the templates and the reflow nozzle for the gpu and cpu chips himself and starting working on my ps3.  a few days later, i get my motherboard back and i reassemble my ps3 and WHAM! BAM! Thank you MA'AM!!!.. my ps3 lives again!!!  and it's been smooth as butter since.  It's going on 2 weeks now, and it's still beasting and also super quiet.. something i totally forgot about when i first bought the console.  Of course i cleaned everything off (dust free) in preparation for my returned and reballed motherboard, but it looks like I just bought myself another 3-5 years with my fatty.  Everything still works great, everything in the HDD was still there, and of course my wife finally extracted all her pics off the HDD.  The best thing about all this?  I got this done for FREE.. and it also helped my collegue out, because now he knows he can repair YOLD ps3s should anyone need it.

Just wanted to share this and let you folks know that if your PS3 is suffering from the YLOD, don't do any of that wacky YOUTUBE do it yourself rememdies.  they don't work.  if you want a real fix.. find someone who can reball or reflow your CPU and GPU. 

But.. are your wifes pictures ok?

I once did the hair dryer trick (with a hot air blower though), and while the PS3 did get fixed, it broke for good relatively soon afterwards.

Consoles aren't supposed to be used after the next generation comes out.

yea.. her pics are fine and dandy.. finally pulled them all off the HDD.. which was about 100gb worth.

yup.. from what my guy says.. the heat applied inconsistent, doesn't get hot enough and not hot enough at the right spots, and you'll fry the motherboard/other circuits trying to fix the gpu/cpu.. which you really aren't fixing either with a hairdryer.

Uh, the big paragraph!

edited for your viewing pleasure..

Miracles are REAL!

Great to hear!!