Ive got a 60 gig with full BC bought in spring 2007, I figured its well out of warranty so may as well take it apart and see if I can get some of the dust out of my heat syncs and maybe check my thermal paste.

Heat sync was about 30-45% blocked up with dust and my thermal paste was dried up, probably some time ago.

Long story short I cleaned out the heat sync, cleaned off the cell and Rsx and put some fresh thermal paste on it and now my fan wont even come on to high setting.  Which is nice because it was starting to get pretty loud running on high all the time.

So I have a question for those of you who have had unit failures.

Did you do any maintenance on your console before it died?

Is this something that will fight off ylod?

Thoughts?

I think the concept of doing maintenance on a console is still pretty foreign to a lot of people. Computers maybe, but with consoles I think the idea is that you should just be able to plug it in and have it work forever. I really like that idea but I don't think it's as feasible as it once was.

Good on you to have the courage to open it up and clean it out. I'm sure your console will thank you as well with a longer lifespan.

I've read that the fix does work, but how long it lasts could depend on the job you did and the extent of the issue.

I'll blow on the rear and side vents when I see that there's some dust settling on the system and every once in a while I'll make use of someone's air compressor.

Not a fix really, it was working fine aside from the fan running a little faster then it used to.

I did this as a preventative measure

I'd say that removing chips and playing around with thermal paste isn't exactly "maintenance". A colleague of mine owns a PC shop and I can occationally see some of "user maintenance" results on mainboards. Sometimes funny, mostly tragic though.

Well then I'm not sure. If you haven't had any issues like a YLOD then perhaps you'll be okay provided nothing was bent out of shape or put back together in the wrong way.

I understand that.  I just put a new computer together so I'm recently acquainted with how delicate it can be (though it's much easier today than apparently it was even 5 years ago).  Still, if not "maintenance" what would you call it?

I think that perhaps he misunderstood. The RSX and Cell, like the Xbox 360 CPU and GPU, aren't connected to the motherboard like the pins on the CPU's for computers if I'm not mistaken. Removing these would be asking for trouble unless you had the tools and skills to reball them.

What the OP said he did was take apart the PS3 (exposing the motherboard) to remove the heatsync where he cleaned off the surfaces of the heatsync and Cell/RSX and reapplied the thermal paste. Nothing to do with removing the chips and I'd say that qualifies as maintenance.

I found it quite simple really, after having a quick look at a PS3 disassembly tutorial/faq type page.

Those touch buttons though ... wowsa very delicate and my only concern when putting everything back together

This should prevent YLOD if it were to ever happen. Its always good to hit your consoles/PC's with duster every few months to keep the airflow at max.