PS3 (Research/Experimental) - NEC/TOKIN Capacitors Replacement - YLOD

[Workz_777]

I had same idea, so I wrote when replace another one.

Ah o.k, so which NECs have you replaced at this point? The 2 x NECs on the RSX (side B of the board) ?

 

[Workz_777]

@mlody95pl

Here is your photo from before (on the last page). But i edited it with some red + yellow circles, to high-light some areas i was hoping to ask you about, sorry i can't see for myself because of the focus and my eyes lol.

See the Red circles, are they cuts on the board, or dirt, or loose / stray tiny solder balls?

See the Yellow circles, watch out for these tiny solder balls, left over from when soldering the new Caps. Make sure there are none of these around, they sometimes roll and get stuck between component legs, which can make a short circuit in places. Check all over with a good eye and clean all of these off the board.

 

[marciolsf]

Fellow friends, please can i ask your advice...

So i received that 16AWG soild copper wire, would it be enough to run just 1 bridge wire (in total) for the RSX, and 1 bridge wire for the CELL?

Or do you guys think 2 bridge wires per processor? To be honest, it was hard for me to fit 1 wire with AVX tans, i'm not looking forward to doing more lol.

View attachment 25717

I'm fairly certain that you only need one wire per processor. As long as you have connectivity across all positive posts on the same processor set, you should be good.

 

[marciolsf]

I can you explain me what I need to do ?

You need to verify that all your positive posts are having continuity, on both sides of the board, for each processor set. I'd test one side, then flip the board and test the other side. If you don't have continuity, then you need to make sure your jumper wire is soldered correctly.

Does that make sense? I can post some screenshots later.

 

[Workz_777]

I'm fairly certain that you only need one wire per processor. As long as you have connectivity across all positive posts on the same processor set, you should be good.

Great news, cheers for that it's most appreciated. Will aim to update with the results soon all being well.

 

[cfreddykrueger]

Here's a few more hours in the Last of Us on my A01.
This game is hard to put down [emoji23]

I'm not trying to gloat here. I'm just trying to give confidence for anyone that wants to try this repair.

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Played all the way through the Last of Us with out any issues at all. Very happy. Now I can get back to finishing Dead Space and Kingdom Hearts [emoji1]


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[ps3xbox]

You need to verify that all your positive posts are having continuity, on both sides of the board, for each processor set. I'd test one side, then flip the board and test the other side. If you don't have continuity, then you need to make sure your jumper wire is soldered correctly.

Does that make sense? I can post some screenshots later.

Hi mate
Please can you post some screenshots. Thanks

 

[ps3xbox]

I'm fairly certain that you only need one wire per processor. As long as you have connectivity across all positive posts on the same processor set, you should be good.

Please can you let us know if the jumper wire works being soldered on this side of the board. Many Thanks

 

[sandungas]

Please can you let us know if the jumper wire works being soldered on this side of the board. Many Thanks

Has been confirmed several times before, the minimal (needed incase of removing all the tokins) is 1 wire for CELL and 1 wire for RSX

There is another detail to consider though, @litlebalup pointed it at beginning of the thread and i agreeded with him (to some exent, not sure how much because i dont have any proof abot how important it is)

The point is, when you are designning a circuit and you need to connect point A with point B the optimal way is with an straight line... but you are not going to see a completly straight line in a circuit... is very rare because point A and B doesnt uses to be aligned in paralell to the circuit board borders and usually there are other lines or components in bewteen them, so your line needs to make some turn
The golden rule is to never do a turn with a corner with angles bigger than 45º, i made a drawing to show it:

The reason why is made this way is because the angles of the corners (and all peaks of the solders) works a bit like antennas that emmits and receives "garbage"... in other words, the most "peaks" in your circuit the most interferences is going to have
When designing circuits this is a "must follow" rule, but is mostly because when designing a circuit you are trying to minimize this kind of problems as most as posible
For the "at home" solder jobs this rule applyes too... but in minor amount because we always have garbage


--------------------------------
Im not going to make a drawing of the tokins because there is a lot of metal with different shapes, but pretty much we have 2 big rectangles
The theoretical rule to follow is to think in it as a river with water... you should solder 1 wire (for the bridge) in between the center of the rectangles
Or.... incase of using 2 wires is better if they are simmetrical (at the sides of the rectangles)
Personally i thnk 1 wire in the center is good enought

 

[marciolsf]

Ok, here's a zoomed version of the TOP side of the board, right above the RSX. The Cell should be on your right.

The RED line on the left should be your jumper wire. When installed correctly, you can set your multi-meter to continuity (or resistance!) and you should get continuity between points A and D, as well as C and B.

Here's Cell's side

Same idea here! You can see a portion of the Cell, below. Jump wire is to the right. When the jumper wire is installed correctly you should get continuity between A and D, as well as in between C and B. You will always get continuity between A and B, as well as between C and D, even without the jumper! So that's not sufficient testing, you need to test the cross points as well.

The same tests can be done of the flip side of the board, if you want to go the extra mile, but the via's should take care of that for you.

 

[sandungas]

But dont draw the red lines on top of the white areas @marciolsf this is going to confuse them a bit, in that images:
Green areas = copper
White areas = fiberglass

What i mentioned in my previous post can be seen there very well, btw, incase of doing it with 1 wire the better place for it is in the center of the rectangles

 

[marciolsf]

But dont draw the red lines on top of the white areas @marciolsf this is going to confuse them a bit, in that images:
Green areas = copper
White areas = fiberglass

What i mentioned in my previous post can be seen there very well, btw, incase of doing it with 1 wire the better place for it is in the center of the rectangles

Good point! I drew it there because that's more or less where the pads are. I don't have a microfiber pen, so I just soldered everything on the pads. I would've taken pictures of the real thing, but the PS3 is boxed up, waiting for me to buy a multimeter...

 

[Blue121368]

So here's a picture of the top and bottom sides of my phat ps3. I replaced all the AUX capacitors with Panasonic ones (to see if height was issue. Sadly, it wasn't ) I'm still getting YLOD in roughly 3ish seconds. What do you guys think I should do?

 

[sandungas]

Im not going to make a drawing of the tokins because there is a lot of metal with different shapes, but pretty much we have 2 big rectangles
The theoretical rule to follow is to think in it as a river with water... you should solder 1 wire (for the bridge) in between the center of the rectangles
Or.... incase of using 2 wires is better if they are simmetrical (at the sides of the rectangles)
Personally i thnk 1 wire in the center is good enought

This is what i meant, i took one of the images posted above and tunned it a bit

This image could help to see how are connected, and if someone needs it you can use it to draw on top of it, is "clean", i colored the areas of copper ---> https://i.imgur.com/IeTKMbj.jpg
Black = ground
Red = V_IN of the tokins
Orange = V_OUT of the tokins (but also V_IN of CELL/RSX)

As you can see point A and B are connected to each other (and at the other side of the board you have another 2 tokins connected togeter to A and B). Same stuff with C and D
That areas in red and orange colors have the geometry of a rectangle... so if you want to do it simmetrically you can do this with only 1 wire
Note i located the solder points of the wire very close to the VIAS (holes), because that VIAS are what connects one side of the motherboard to the other side of the motherboard... in plain words, im doing it this way because i know that VIAS are the main "river" (are the bottlenecks with the biggest amount of water)... im trying to make a "bypass" in between the bottlenecks

This way is correct too following the same rules i mentioned before, because is symmetrical, the amount of "water of the river" is going to be divided in half, in plain words, every wire is going to carry 50% of the water

But remember... you just need to do this bridging only if you remove all the tokins
And you can do it with only 1 wire (use a thick wire)... but you are free do do it with 2 or 3 and in both sides of the motherboard, is fine... but most probably is pointless and could be counterproductive because all that solder peaks are going to cause interferences as mentioned before
You know... the amount of interferences is going to be smaller if you do it with 1 or 2 wires... but if you do it with a lot of wires is wrong

 

[sandungas]

And btw, the images of my previous post could help to understand what happens when you use a multimeter to meassure resistence/continuity in between ground and the points marked as C/D
Some people went confused because they removed the tokins but they still had some continuity in between ground and C/D

As you can see in the image, when you touch C/D with the multimeter (the orange areas) you are really "touching" inside CELL/RSX... so you are meassuring the internal circuits of CELL/RSX

 

[sandungas]

So here's a picture of the top and bottom sides of my phat ps3. I replaced all the AUX capacitors with Panasonic ones (to see if height was issue. Sadly, it wasn't ) I'm still getting YLOD in roughly 3ish seconds. What do you guys think I should do?

It looks like one of the black wires for CELL (located at south of your photo) is soldered to ground, thats a short circuit (and good news, because maybe by fixing it the PS3 is going to work)
The motherboard have protections for that kind of shorcuts, so probably there is no damage

But now you need to redo that wiring i suggest to use other wire for it, is better if it have a single core, incase is too big you can hammer it in the tips to make it more plane and easyer to solder it

And as you can see is needed lot of heat to solder that wires, and usually the plastic shield of the wire melts and you are not sure if is still isolating it electrically, and it becomes an annoyance

So... is more "clean" if you use a wire made with a single core of copper, and without plastic shield
If you have kapton tape you can do as suggested some posts ago (nice photos btw) sticking some kapton over the ground areas... then the "peeled" big copper wire on top... then another layer of kapton tape on top of it
This way you create like a sandwich of tapes with the big copper wire in between them

 

[Workz_777]

This is what i meant, i took one of the images posted above and tunned it a bit

This image could help to see how are connected, and if someone needs it you can use it to draw on top of it, is "clean", i colored the areas of copper ---> https://i.imgur.com/IeTKMbj.jpg
Black = ground
Red = V_IN of the tokins
Orange = V_OUT of the tokins (but also V_IN of CELL/RSX)

As you can see point A and B are connected to each other (and at the other side of the board you have another 2 tokins connected togeter to A and B). Same stuff with C and D
That areas in red and orange colors have the geometry of a rectangle... so if you want to do it simmetrically you can do this with only 1 wire
Note i located the solder points of the wire very close to the VIAS (holes), because that VIAS are what connects one side of the motherboard to the other side of the motherboard... in plain words, im doing it this way because i know that VIAS are the main "river" (are the bottlenecks with the biggest amount of water)... im trying to make a "bypass" in between the bottlenecks

This way is correct too following the same rules i mentioned before, because is symmetrical, the amount of "water of the river" is going to be divided in half, in plain words, every wire is going to carry 50% of the water

But remember... you just need to do this bridging only if you remove all the tokins
And you can do it with only 1 wire (use a thick wire)... but you are free do do it with 2 or 3 and in both sides of the motherboard, is fine... but most probably is pointless and could be counterproductive because all that solder peaks are going to cause interferences as mentioned before
You know... the amount of interferences is going to be smaller if you do it with 1 or 2 wires... but if you do it with a lot of wires is wrong

Wow, thanks! Can i ask @sandungas ...i wanted to solder my bridge wire(s) like you show here, from Vias to Vias, but i was worried if we give the DC current the option to take a path of least resistance (the wire being soldered before and after the caps) then could the current bypass the capacitors, leap-frogging them?

Forgive me, i have dyslexia and sometimes stuff like this can confuse me

 

[Workz_777]

Played all the way through the Last of Us with out any issues at all. Very happy. Now I can get back to finishing Dead Space and Kingdom Hearts [emoji1]


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Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet !! Nice one Bro!!

 

[sandungas]

Wow, thanks! Can i ask @sandungas ...i wanted to solder my bridge wire(s) like you show here, from Vias to Vias, but i was worried if we give the DC current the option to take a path of least resistance (the wire being soldered before and after the caps) then could the current bypass the capacitors, leap-frogging them?

Forgive me, i have dyslexia and sometimes stuff like this can confuse me

I like electronics as a hobby and i dont know much about theory, but i think it doesnt matters, when we add the tantalums they are located like an "extension" of the circuit, in some way is the same than what i suggested in this thread, in that drawing the stripe is working as a single capacitor
https://www.psx-place.com/threads/ps3-cechk01-from-ylod-to-glod-to-shutdown.29428/#post-241131

 

[Grey Ghost]

I killed the PS3 I was working on inn an attempt to delid the CELL and RSX.

Delidding the RSX was easy, just a little heat and it popped off really easy


Delidding the CELL was a challenge and I knew I failed when the IHS came off and saw 3 scratches on the substrate. Put new thermal paste on the die and instant YLOD.

This was at least a good practice for me so that I can replace the caps on my personal PS3.


I wanted to try a delid because the fan on this eBay PS3 was so damn loud. No matter what game it was, after just a few minutes of play the thing was at its highest speed and became ear piercingly loud so it would just be unplayable.

Personally, i don't think using any sort of metal tool - no matter how flexible or sharp it is - should be used when delidding. I used a .006" feeler gauge as it was very flexible but also not too stiff so that it's thin enough to get under the IHS as it's quite a small space between the IHS and the substrate. Unfortunately I knew I messed up when I saw the feeler gauge kink.

I saw someone a few posts back mention using some thin nylon fishing line which sounds way better and safer.

But alas, I have a PS3 for spare parts now unless someone is willing to replace the CELL. It's been a learning experience and well worth the $45 I paid for this PS3 just to get refamiliarized with soldering again.

RIP PS3

EDIT: Im not even sure if delidding was even necessary for my fan issue.
I'll find myself another PS3 from eBay, possibly just the motherboard and see if delidding with fishing line would go better

I wanted to do a delid because about a week ago while I was searching for thermal adhesive- so that the IHS can be re-attached the RSX and not just be loose I found this intriguing video of an engineer creating his own thermal adhesive epoxy. It seems to work really well and he does sell it at half the price of the current thermal adhesive we can buy. I figured an epoxy with a much higher thermal conductivity wouldn't hurt (other than the person trying to delid the IHS again) and probably lend itself to much better thermals overall for the RSX. The CELLs IHS is simply secured with a ridiculously strong silicone type of thermal material and doesn't actually do anything other than keeping the IHS on the die.