The youtube algorithm has fed me this video recently and I thought it was super interesting.
It starts off a bit slow, but at some point the realshit music kicks in and he gets to the crux of the matter
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0UMG3iVYZI
I think most are aware of what was identified to have likely been the cause of the YLOD years back, which is solder balls breaking and that reheating the system either with a heatgun or by letting it overheat itself would fix it temporarily. More professional approaches would outright replace those balls underneath the chip (reballing), which was touted to last much longer and be an actual fix.
A few years ago, a new theory had sprung up and caught on: No, it was the capacitors going bad. Some people even started replacing their still working capacitor chips in the hopes of saving their console from future death ("preventive maintenance").
This was now the accepted solution to finally fix the YLOD...or not.
As the youtuber points out: We love simple solutions to complex problems, and if we can blame the capacitors for the YLOD and don't need expensive equipment and knowhow to fix it, then that's wonderful news. Someone more knowledgable than the average tinkerer figured this out, surely he's right.
But he analyzed the responses from popular threads describing the method, and it turned out that there was no conclusive evidence that it actually helped in most of the cases. Most earlier posts would be positive, but either they never reported back on the state of their console after a few months, or - burried in later pages - admitted it didn't help after all. We know from reflowing that even something that provides no longterm fix can still work for a while, so this would've been kinda important.. That doesn't mean that those capacitors cannot be the reason for failure in some cases, but replacing them isn't the magical fix either.
"OK BUT THEN WHAT IS THE REAL REASON??"
Well, according to the theory presented by "RIP Felix", it is..
...the balls. Fuck, we're back to the balls. But not necessarily those balls underneath, but rather the smaller ones inside the GPU:
The big balls underneath are the ones connecting the chip to the mainboard. These are the ones that reballing seeks to replace. But sandwiched between the chip (yellow) and the green substrate lies another set of balls, the "bumps". They are covered in something called "underfill" (blue), which is the glue-like stuff you probably noticed if you've ever delidded a PS3 chip. The underfill serves to relief some stress that occurs when all that shit warps during heating and cooling. Everything involving those bumps, their material properties, what they're connected to, the underfill, it all needs to match. And apparantly, it didn't, and so they start to get cracks over time, eventually causing the chip to fail.
Some time around from when the PS3 launched until 2010ish, Nvidia had problems with their chips and this also caused higher rates of failure with their notebook chips in particular. The underfilling material seemed to have been ill-chosen.
This can't be fixed. It's essentially a bad, broken chip. But that doesn't mean that reballing doesn't solve anything; those bigger solder balls underneath can ofc also break. It just doesn't eliminate the fundamental problem. Later PS3 models have this fixed and they also don't get as hot in general, what with all the shrunk process nodes.
The thing is, none of this is new information, it's just recontextualized coupled with the realization that mayyybe it's the chips that were at fault after all. Maybe you've also seen Louis Rossmann rant about broken Macbooks on youtube, pointing out the same likely causes of failure. It's apparantly a reoccurring problem.
Now, this wouldn't be so bad if those early launch PS3 affected by this weren't so damn valuable, being the only BC models available. Otherwise you could've just told people to get a Slim or something instead.
So we still needed a solution, and the most promising solution as shown in the video is super cool; you create a Frankenstein PS3 by implanting a GPU from a more recent model to a launch model's mainboard. It is a grossly unholy ritual. But it makes so much sense. I've always wondered if this wasn't possible, considering that with the exception of very late models, the GPUs kinda match. Surely someone with the expertise could trick the system to accept the new organ... well here it is, and unbeknownst to the community at large, apparantly been performed by two Indonesian technomancers for quite a few years already. And even Sony themselves have performed such a swap to repair some units.
Luckily there are so many "healthy" PS3 are out in the wild that the pool of potential donor GPUs is quite vast and there won't be a shortage of parts to try this method of repair any time soon, should it ever become more widespread.
If you have a BC PS3, undust it, give it a hug
It starts off a bit slow, but at some point the realshit music kicks in and he gets to the crux of the matter
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0UMG3iVYZI
I think most are aware of what was identified to have likely been the cause of the YLOD years back, which is solder balls breaking and that reheating the system either with a heatgun or by letting it overheat itself would fix it temporarily. More professional approaches would outright replace those balls underneath the chip (reballing), which was touted to last much longer and be an actual fix.
A few years ago, a new theory had sprung up and caught on: No, it was the capacitors going bad. Some people even started replacing their still working capacitor chips in the hopes of saving their console from future death ("preventive maintenance").
This was now the accepted solution to finally fix the YLOD...or not.
As the youtuber points out: We love simple solutions to complex problems, and if we can blame the capacitors for the YLOD and don't need expensive equipment and knowhow to fix it, then that's wonderful news. Someone more knowledgable than the average tinkerer figured this out, surely he's right.
But he analyzed the responses from popular threads describing the method, and it turned out that there was no conclusive evidence that it actually helped in most of the cases. Most earlier posts would be positive, but either they never reported back on the state of their console after a few months, or - burried in later pages - admitted it didn't help after all. We know from reflowing that even something that provides no longterm fix can still work for a while, so this would've been kinda important.. That doesn't mean that those capacitors cannot be the reason for failure in some cases, but replacing them isn't the magical fix either.
"OK BUT THEN WHAT IS THE REAL REASON??"
Well, according to the theory presented by "RIP Felix", it is..
...the balls. Fuck, we're back to the balls. But not necessarily those balls underneath, but rather the smaller ones inside the GPU:
The big balls underneath are the ones connecting the chip to the mainboard. These are the ones that reballing seeks to replace. But sandwiched between the chip (yellow) and the green substrate lies another set of balls, the "bumps". They are covered in something called "underfill" (blue), which is the glue-like stuff you probably noticed if you've ever delidded a PS3 chip. The underfill serves to relief some stress that occurs when all that shit warps during heating and cooling. Everything involving those bumps, their material properties, what they're connected to, the underfill, it all needs to match. And apparantly, it didn't, and so they start to get cracks over time, eventually causing the chip to fail.
Some time around from when the PS3 launched until 2010ish, Nvidia had problems with their chips and this also caused higher rates of failure with their notebook chips in particular. The underfilling material seemed to have been ill-chosen.
This can't be fixed. It's essentially a bad, broken chip. But that doesn't mean that reballing doesn't solve anything; those bigger solder balls underneath can ofc also break. It just doesn't eliminate the fundamental problem. Later PS3 models have this fixed and they also don't get as hot in general, what with all the shrunk process nodes.
The thing is, none of this is new information, it's just recontextualized coupled with the realization that mayyybe it's the chips that were at fault after all. Maybe you've also seen Louis Rossmann rant about broken Macbooks on youtube, pointing out the same likely causes of failure. It's apparantly a reoccurring problem.
Now, this wouldn't be so bad if those early launch PS3 affected by this weren't so damn valuable, being the only BC models available. Otherwise you could've just told people to get a Slim or something instead.
So we still needed a solution, and the most promising solution as shown in the video is super cool; you create a Frankenstein PS3 by implanting a GPU from a more recent model to a launch model's mainboard. It is a grossly unholy ritual. But it makes so much sense. I've always wondered if this wasn't possible, considering that with the exception of very late models, the GPUs kinda match. Surely someone with the expertise could trick the system to accept the new organ... well here it is, and unbeknownst to the community at large, apparantly been performed by two Indonesian technomancers for quite a few years already. And even Sony themselves have performed such a swap to repair some units.
Luckily there are so many "healthy" PS3 are out in the wild that the pool of potential donor GPUs is quite vast and there won't be a shortage of parts to try this method of repair any time soon, should it ever become more widespread.
If you have a BC PS3, undust it, give it a hug
