New ps3, new problem

[rrelite]

Hi all.

just bought another faulty ps3 of ebay it turns on fine but after about 1 minute the fan kicks in full speed but the air blowing out is really cold.

i have opened it up cleaned every thing and reapplied some new arctic silver heat sink compound and replaced the 15 blade fan with a 19 speed fan but that didnt work.

after that i did an oven reflow but still fan is kicking in after about a minute.

its well circualted and it isnt getting hot but for some reason the ps3 is kicking fan in.

im assuming its the onboard thermostat but after looking on google i can not find its location on the board, im guessing its inside the gpu/cpu some where but could some one please confirm this for me please.

is their a way to replace thermostat?

or is their a way bypass/dissable the thermostat altogether?

maybe a fan mod to keep it in second constantly?

any ideas i would really appreciate some help cheers guys

Richard

[rrelite]

sorry lads should of stated its a uk cechgo3

[szlifier]

If it's after one minute, then it's working fine. You propably apply too much paste. You have to put a minimal amount of it. Thermal paste is not supposed to be used like butter. Absolute minimum.

[rrelite]

thanks for the reply but i dont think so, it came with the fan fault i have tried new fan and and reapplied heat sink compound twice, which i have done many many times before in the last 10 years unlike many videos on youtube i know how to apply it properly.

what im thinking is, maybe its had ylod repair before and who ever did the repair got it too hot and damaged the thermostat, i maybe be totally wrong on that but i dont think its the hs compund.

do you know where the thermostat is located?

also would it be possible to manually reduce the fan by adding a few varible resistors?

cheers mate rich

[EiKi]

well, i had a ps3 about the same after cleaning and applying new paste, it took some days before the paste set i guess then it went quiet again, for longer. i have no idea where the ps3 read the temp tho,

does the fan lower again after a while? or is it going full all time without you doing anything on it? aka idle?

i wouldent recommend to lower the fan tho if possible, as its high risk of overheating then afaik, you tried different fws to?

[rrelite]

no mate its constantly on high thats why i thought about lowering the fan speed manually because to be honest with you all the ps3's i have had have never run on full speed so hopefully it will run fine on a medium setting?

[szlifier]

Then it should be the thermostat, but it's integrated in the chip and not even under the heatspreader, but inside the chip.

There are fan mods around. The fan in PS3 is controlled by PWM. There are 3 pins, +12, GND and PWM signal at about 3V. You can use simple 555 chip and a potentiometer to make your own controlled PWM signal, or use a microcontroller. A simple resistor or diode will not work right in the PS3.

But you can try use few diodes on +12 line, but I don't know if it will work. You know, it may check the fan's RPM and counter your mod, but I'm just speculating.

[rrelite]

Then it should be the thermostat, but it's integrated in the chip and not even under the heatspreader, but inside the chip.

There are fan mods around. The fan in PS3 is controlled by PWM. There are 3 pins, +12, GND and PWM signal at about 3V. You can use simple 555 chip and a potentiometer to make your own controlled PWM signal, or use a microcontroller. A simple resistor or diode will not work right in the PS3.

But you can try use few diodes on +12 line, but I don't know if it will work. You know, it may check the fan's RPM and counter your mod, but I'm just speculating.

cheers mate so swapping thermostat is out the window looks like ill have to get down to maplins and make a fan mod to controll the fan speed thanks

[EiKi]

ahh ok, well as he mentioned about fan mod would maybe be an idea, as you can control speed, good luck, i would be afraid it overheat tho if on manual hehe

[JLM]

If you don't feel like designing your own, there are actual plans floating around out there. I know I have seen them but don't remember where, sorry. I'll look around and see if I downloaded them for future reference.

[rrelite]

ok so from one end of the spectrum to the other the fan is now not spinning at all i have tried 3 different fans none are working!!!!

[rrelite]

well i went a built a fan mod today which works great but after five minutes the fan kicks into high on its own and my mod wont work any more any ideas

[szlifier]

well i went a built a fan mod today which works great but after five minutes the fan kicks into high on its own and my mod wont work any more any ideas

If you can show me the schematics for this mod I will be able to tell you more.

[rrelite]

If you can show me the schematics for this mod I will be able to tell you more.

well its not really a mod more of a put to together.

i have a 220k linear pot to that i spliced into the fans pwm cable i then ran a cable from pot to ps3 psu 3.v
it controls the fan great but after a few minutes the ps3 takes over and kicks it into full speed.

if you read my earlier post you will see that the fan died all together, well i found the problem was a blown cap on the board (i followed the trace from the connector to find it) which i couldnt replace so i took the fans 12v feed (red cable) and ran it into the blurays 12v to get the fan running again which worked but now im thinking maybe this power supply could be causing the fan to run high, but then again if i dissconnect the pwm cable (grey) from motherboard how has the ps3 got any control over it at all?

i would really appreciate some help in slowing the fan down cheers mate rich

[szlifier]

The PS3 fan itself has electronics inside. It is powered from +12 but the speed is controlled by PWM signal. Keeping that in mind, if you connect constant voltage, around 3V to the PWM cable, the fan will recognise it as 100% width PWM signal and will run the blades at full speed. PWM is a low frequency signal (usually 30 -100Hz), when at 50% the signal look like this: 3V, 0V, 3V, 0V, 3V, 0V, .... So changing voltage at this pin will not work and may only damage or cause malfunction, which I assume is happening right now.

If you really don't want to generate a PWM signal, then keep the PWM cable from the fan connected to 3V-3,3V and connect the +12 cable to 5V source, you can take it from USB ports. It should run fast enough to cool it and shouldn't be too loud. This may not work if the fan's electronics won't work with lower voltage, then PWM is the only option.

The fan requires significant amount of current to run, so don't mess with blu ray, or hdd sources, because they are strictly rated to run just those devices. USB port line should provide enough current to run the fan safely.

[v8s10]

The last ps3 i had that kicked the fan up to high speed within 30 seconds had bad thermal paste under the cpu & gpu heats spreaders. Had nothing to do with the fan. VERY carefully pop off the heat spreaders, clean & reapply thermal paste & it solved the high speed fan for mine.

[JLM]

I found the mod I had seen, don't know if it's what your looking for, but here it is:

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=727112
(yes, xbox forum but it's for the ps3, really.)

He uses a 555 to regulate the %duty cycle for controlling the fan speed and runs it off the 12volt line but also has a variation for running it off the 5 volt.

There is a 50% speed schematic and 30% speed schematic posted there. There are good pictures/diagrams of his circuit posted there. I would have posted them here, but didn't want to copy his work w/o permission (even with credit to relaxxx).

[rrelite]

ok i tried absolutley every thing but nothing is working.

i beleive the key to my problem is the pwm (grey) wire that goes from fan to motherboard because if i have that connected the fan stays on high and ps3 runs fine and ice cold for hours, if i dissconect it but keep the fan on full with mod then the ps3 displays the message about being to hot and shuts down with in seconds even though its still ice cold.


so what i need to do is to be able trick the ps3 into thinking that the grey cable is still connected but at the same time be able to lower the fan manually.

if i simply disconnect the cable ps3 shuts down

if i use my fan mod with the cable connected after a few minutes my ps3 over takes my fan mod and ramps it up to full power.

any ideas

[v8s10]

Pull the heat spreaders (or at least the one off the rsx) and reapply thermal paste. What would cause a PS3 fan to speed up? Heat, thermal sensor is getting hot, fan speeds up but the air coming out the PS3 is cool/cold. How can that be? Poor heat transfer to the heat sinks. I've seen it and done it, it works. Your PS3 is actually overheating and blowing cold air because there no heat transfer. why not try it?

Check youtube for a how to on pulling off the heatspreader(s). Very hard to get the cpu one off without damaging the cpu, so try the rsx first.

[rrelite]

Pull the heat spreaders (or at least the one off the rsx) and reapply thermal paste. What would cause a PS3 fan to speed up? Heat, thermal sensor is getting hot, fan speeds up but the air coming out the PS3 is cool/cold. How can that be? Poor heat transfer to the heat sinks. I've seen it and done it, it works. Your PS3 is actually overheating and blowing cold air because there no heat transfer. why not try it?

Check youtube for a how to on pulling off the heatspreader(s). Very hard to get the cpu one off without damaging the cpu, so try the rsx first.

hi mate thanks for the reply but i have done what you suggested, i beleive the thermostat is damaged and as this is built into the cpu my only hope is to manualy control the fan whilst the ps3 thinks its still in controll but unfortunatly all the mods i have tried always eventually get overided by the ps3 :(

[v8s10]

Ahh, i didnt know you had tried that! Sorry i cant be of more help, good luck & i hope you figure it out.

[rrelite]

this may sound stupid but could some one please draw me this circuit in an idiot proof way cos im not sure i have done it right

i only need a simple sketch like drawing the wires from the chip instead of drawsing lines

just draw it like it would look with in real live and where the wires go

im sorry for being a pain and sounding like an idiot but i really need to sort this

id appreciate any help you cleverer guys could give

cheers rich

[GaryOPA]

I used to run a large Console Repair business, and we saw alot of units with this problem.

90% of time were fixed by removing the RSX heatplate (the big metal plate, covering the 4 memory chips and actual small graphic chip.)

Scrap off all the old glue, it is infact two-part epoxy thermal paste, the perm. kind.

It is best to re-apply the actual epoxy thermal paste, so the heatplate does not move around, and very very little is needed.

This plate has a bad track record of getting loose if the system been dropped at one time, or just mailed.

50% of the machines I fixed had a history of being mailed by POSTAL service, not UPS or DHL, but POSTAL, some of time the plate came off with just a small pull using your hand.