A few weeks ago, I was playing Star Trek: Bridge Crew with a buddy and noticed a constant sound in the background. At first, I thought it was some sound effect from the star ship's engines, but, once I took the PSVR and headphones off, noticed it was my PS4's fan going absolutely nuts. It wasn't a particularly worrisome sound, rather just the regular sound the PS4 always made, but louder.
This reminded me of my PS3 slim (RIP 2009 - 2015), which got YLOD due to the GPU unsoldering, which might happen if the console gets too hot.
So, after almost four years, I decided to crack open my old faithful PS4 and give it a good dusting off. I followed iFixIt's excellent guide. I had to improvise a bit, because my model is a CUH-1000 (which only made the cleaning more relevant, since v1 products are the most susceptible to failures).
Sony didn't help at all filling the console with T9 screws. I counted over 20 of them. However, aside from that the process is pretty simple, and anyone comfortable with electronics shouldn't have an issue with it. It took me about two hours. Remember to have a decent set of screwdrivers and thermal paste nearby. If you don't feel comfortable doing it, ask a friend who built their own PC :)
By the end, I removed a big chunk of dust from the heat sink, which was probably the cause of the additional noise (the fan had to work double time to cool the APU). I also put a fresh layer of thermal paste on the APU (which helps remove heat from the chip). Since the cleaning, the console has definitely been less noisy.
Hopefully this effort allows my console survive for a longer time without heating issues.
Unfortunately, I can't post the photos I took right now, but I'll update with them later.
Considering previous tales of cockroach-infested PlayStations, I'm wondering if more people have console-cleaning tales to share.
This reminded me of my PS3 slim (RIP 2009 - 2015), which got YLOD due to the GPU unsoldering, which might happen if the console gets too hot.
So, after almost four years, I decided to crack open my old faithful PS4 and give it a good dusting off. I followed iFixIt's excellent guide. I had to improvise a bit, because my model is a CUH-1000 (which only made the cleaning more relevant, since v1 products are the most susceptible to failures).
Sony didn't help at all filling the console with T9 screws. I counted over 20 of them. However, aside from that the process is pretty simple, and anyone comfortable with electronics shouldn't have an issue with it. It took me about two hours. Remember to have a decent set of screwdrivers and thermal paste nearby. If you don't feel comfortable doing it, ask a friend who built their own PC :)
By the end, I removed a big chunk of dust from the heat sink, which was probably the cause of the additional noise (the fan had to work double time to cool the APU). I also put a fresh layer of thermal paste on the APU (which helps remove heat from the chip). Since the cleaning, the console has definitely been less noisy.
Hopefully this effort allows my console survive for a longer time without heating issues.
Unfortunately, I can't post the photos I took right now, but I'll update with them later.
Considering previous tales of cockroach-infested PlayStations, I'm wondering if more people have console-cleaning tales to share.
