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

[squeept]

If you want, I'll buy either of the scopes you guys purchased off of you for full retail price and hold on to them until I get another bad cap console so I can do some side by side comparisons.

 

[evaldas256]

Hiya, sorry i see you asked this twice now. Well, in my opinion, for the short term and for testing if replacing the NECs solves your YLOD, then you could use them. But maybe for long-term use, you might wanna get the Panasonics, 470uF 2.5V ones instead.

I think the RSX & CELL draw (approx) 1.2V - 1.5V (please someone correct me if that's wrong) ...so your 10V rated caps should only provide what the RSX & CELL draw. However, if there was a surge / spike in excess voltage, then the 10V caps can supply all the way up to 10V, but the RSX & CELL probably can only go as high as (approx) 2.5V - 3.3V before damage starts to occurs, so i guess there's the potential danger, excess voltage going to the RSX or CELL. It probably won't happen, but there is a greater risk over a longer period of use, i guess.

Whereas, with the 2.5V capacitors, they can only go that high, so anything beyond 2.5V and they fail, creating an open circuit, and the RSX / CELL never sees anything above 2.5V where potential damage can start to occur. But when capacitors receive alot more voltage than what they are rated for, (say we apply 12V to a 2.5V rated capacitor), then they go 'pop', burn and even catch on fire, see short video clip of that here:-

Regarding the Panasonic tantalums, you can get them from an authorized distributer, like Newark if you live in USA / Asia, or if you live in Europe, etc, then "Newark" is called "Farnell", i would recommend (for the long-term) getting the correct & legitimate tantalum capacitors (for this application) from there. (that is...if your 10V ones do solve the problem once you replaced the NECs with them).

Here is the part number for those Panasonics:- 2R5TPE470M9, they have a very low ESR too. And they have a short height, only 1.8mm high, so they fit nicely under the PS3's metal shields.

You can search that part number here:-
https://www.newark.com/

Or, you can search that same part number on other authorized distributers' websites, like Digi-Key, and as mentioned: Mouser. I personally prefer Newark / Farnell so far, and they also have a cheaper minimum order for free shipping.

Wow, i never expected such an in-depth reply, thank you so much, you really brightened my day.

Yeah, i guess the 10V working, considering 6.3V is fine makes sense, i'll give it a try. I'll be doing this on a PS3 i don't care so much about, so no harm done if something goes wrong. I have a CECHA waiting for the same treatment, will be getting 2.5V ones for it.

 

[marciolsf]

It was this guy

ICQUANZX Digital Oscilloscope, DSO FNIRSI PRO Digital Oscilloscope Handheld Oscilloscope Mini Palm Size Oscilloscope with 5M Bandwidth 20MS/s Sampling Rate https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07V6795WP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_0P3XEbJW9T61H

The sampling rate is 20MS/s (supposedly), but it's altogether possible I'm doing something wrong. I fiddled with the divs until I got something that made sense, and at that point the signal I got was very similar to your bad tokins reading. Another reading I got, at a higher div (I think? Too tired to think now), was a square wave. I'm going to try to capture that again tomorrow.

I appreciate your offer, its very generous! But I'm going to hang on to mine I did repairs 10 or so years ago, and have been wanting to get back into it, so that scope is a good enough tool to get started again. I'll buy a rigol if I manage to do well again


Unfortunately I don't have another cecha01! I have a super slim, but I don't know that the readings would be comparable.

 

[aminiani]

thanks any way about your help and tall your missus i'm sorry to never let you cut the lawn yet i just wait the pandemic to end to buy ever thing



can take a photo for your soldering

I try to solder the wires of external capacitor to the base of NEC but the solder and wire

is not stay fix and disconnected from base of NEC..
My mainboard type is SEM-001

 

[evaldas256]

Not sure if anyone has already written about this, but it would be nice to know what is the minimum reassembly required to test the PS3 after installing a new set of tantalums. Currently i am under the impression that if, say the Blu ray drive is not connected, it will just YLOD.

 

[Fallen777]

Hey i have just brought a PS3 fat model its a CECHK and the seller told me its been serviced before.Has a lot of dust inside it now as according to him it had been sitting around and died while working one day 3 to 4 months prior.
This the problem i have with it

My question is:
IS it ylod and will changing NECs with tantulum fix it
also the seller told he took it to two repair shops and the repairing guy told him GPUs thermal needs to be changed

 

[Gus21]

Hiya, Sony put 2.5V NECs on the PS3s, so we are trying to match that voltage, as close as possible.

Some common voltages for "off the shelf" capacitors are like:- 2.5V, 4V, 6.3V, 10V, 16V, 25V, 50V, etc. We must not go lower than what Sony put in (2.5V), but we can go higher...

(a) 2.5V = perfect match.

(b) 4V = next best choice.

(c) 6.3V = no higher than this.

(d) 10V = for testing purposes (if you already purchased them by mistake)

I know this thread is long, 112 pages (and counting lol) but there are so many gems & treasures posted from users, nearly on every page, that if a person read the whole thing - they would come out the other end like a Super Saiyan

Thank you.

 

[evaldas256]

Hey i have just brought a PS3 fat model its a CECHK and the seller told me its been serviced before.Has a lot of dust inside it now as according to him it had been sitting around and died while working one day 3 to 4 months prior.
This the problem i have with it

My question is:
IS it ylod and will changing NECs with tantulum fix it
also the seller told he took it to two repair shops and the repairing guy told him GPUs thermal needs to be changed

Seems to me like the YLOD comes up too quick to be capacitor related. From experience, it popping up so quick, i'd say maybe a power supply issue. I'd see what the other here have to say.

 

[squeept]

The sampling rate is 20MS/s (supposedly), but it's altogether possible I'm doing something wrong. I fiddled with the divs until I got something that made sense, and at that point the signal I got was very similar to your bad tokins reading. Another reading I got, at a higher div (I think? Too tired to think now), was a square wave. I'm going to try to capture that again tomorrow.

That works out to 20 samples per 1us div, which is low but should be sufficient. I think maybe I want to blame the cheap probes again. I just looked over the images again, and I'm not sure what's going on because the amplitude decreases when you changed the time/div. The amplitude should stay the same, you're just squishing more of the time axis on to the same screen. There also shouldn't have been a square wave anywhere. I'm not sure what you could be doing wrong. Where are you clipping on for ground?

The requirements here really push the limit of the specs of these cheap scopes, so I wouldn't be surprised if they act funny so close to the edge. Regardless, it should work great for most normal uses if you're going to hold on to them. Laser eye patterns are usually 1.5Vpp in the khz range I think, so they'll definitely be able to handle adjusting all your old consoles. Next time I find some bad caps, I'll set the system aside until I can get my hands on one of these to see what we can figure out.

In the mean time, I guess I'll stop yelling at people to buy cheap 'scopes.

 

[joe musashi]

I try to solder the wires of external capacitor to the base of NEC but the solder and wireView attachment 25949 is not stay fix and disconnected from base of NEC..
My mainboard type is SEM-001

your board is same mine

 

[Fallen777]

Seems to me like the YLOD comes up too quick to be capacitor related. From experience, it popping up so quick, i'd say maybe a power supply issue. I'd see what the other here have to say.

Well there's a trick for booting a ylod console by pressing the power button quite a lot of times until it boots.
I think its either heating NEC capactiors a bit or gathering power a little bit each time its power on thus completeting the boot process untill enough power is gathered.
IF my latter guess is true than this can be used as a diagonostic step for identify the need of NEC tokin capactitors replacement or CPU and GPU reballing.

 

[marciolsf]

That works out to 20 samples per 1us div, which is low but should be sufficient. I think maybe I want to blame the cheap probes again. I just looked over the images again, and I'm not sure what's going on because the amplitude decreases when you changed the time/div. The amplitude should stay the same, you're just squishing more of the time axis on to the same screen. There also shouldn't have been a square wave anywhere. I'm not sure what you could be doing wrong. Where are you clipping on for ground?

The requirements here really push the limit of the specs of these cheap scopes, so I wouldn't be surprised if they act funny so close to the edge. Regardless, it should work great for most normal uses if you're going to hold on to them. Laser eye patterns are usually 1.5Vpp in the khz range I think, so they'll definitely be able to handle adjusting all your old consoles. Next time I find some bad caps, I'll set the system aside until I can get my hands on one of these to see what we can figure out.

In the mean time, I guess I'll stop yelling at people to buy cheap 'scopes.

For ground, I tried both the metal shield and the ground edge around the board, but I seem to get inconsistent results/no results at all when I do that.

I seem to get more results when I ground at the negative pole of the tokins pad, so thats where I was connected when I took those pictures. It's a bit of a pain to get good contact there, since my probes are alligator clips, so I'm going to solder some leads to the pads and connect to those instead.

 

[SeanRanklin]

Just for reference heres a photo of some burnt Tokins from a recent console i just completed and sent back to its owner and FINALLY got one under my belt (1 of 13) and got one to work using new tant caps.

Heres the original Owners post @SeanRanklin so u can follow his own issues and the repair

https://www.psx-place.com/threads/cecha00-60gb-ps3-shuts-off-in-only-one-game-ylod-style.20826/

Long story short with the GPU side replaced the console still shut down during game play, it wasnt until the CPU side was done also when results were seen and Games could now be completed with no shut downs at all.


View attachment 25921

View attachment 25919

Hello, dear thread. I am back yet again, with the continuation of my dilemma with this PS3.

As mentioned above, all Tokins were replaced on the bottom of the board with Tantalums, which solved the problem of the console shutting down at certain heavy power demanding games. However, the shutdowns have returned but with a strange twist..

Since using the console normally for 3 days, the console has shut down on me four times. These shut downs are different from the previous ones i was experiencing as 3 of them were triggered only the first time the console was booted up each day, but after 5 minutes of idling or in game. It happens with PS1/2/3 games and at the XMB as well. After the shut down, the console is rebooted, file system is checked and i was able to play for over 6 hours with no shut downs even on the games that gave me issues in the first place. One exception though, came today. After the first cold boot shutdown, i began playing a PS2 game where the unit shut down again after 20 minutes of game play. I had not experienced two shutdowns in one day since the tantalum were installed, so now i am not sure where to go from here or what to check.

The shutdowns are not triggered by anything specific like before the repair, these ones seem completely random, which is making it ver difficult to diagnose. Does anyone have any information on this or somewhere i can begin looking? I am getting to the point where i feel like giving up on chasing a reliable fat ps3 and just sticking with my launch slim model. That thing has never had any kind of repair apart from a vaccume, once and the thing never lets me down!

 

[Yugonibblit]

Hello, dear thread. I am back yet again, with the continuation of my dilemma with this PS3.

As mentioned above, all Tokins were replaced on the bottom of the board with Tantalums, which solved the problem of the console shutting down at certain heavy power demanding games. However, the shutdowns have returned but with a strange twist..

Since using the console normally for 3 days, the console has shut down on me four times. These shut downs are different from the previous ones i was experiencing as 3 of them were triggered only the first time the console was booted up each day, but after 5 minutes of idling or in game. It happens with PS1/2/3 games and at the XMB as well. After the shut down, the console is rebooted, file system is checked and i was able to play for over 6 hours with no shut downs even on the games that gave me issues in the first place. One exception though, came today. After the first cold boot shutdown, i began playing a PS2 game where the unit shut down again after 20 minutes of game play. I had not experienced two shutdowns in one day since the tantalum were installed, so now i am not sure where to go from here or what to check.

The shutdowns are not triggered by anything specific like before the repair, these ones seem completely random, which is making it ver difficult to diagnose. Does anyone have any information on this or somewhere i can begin looking? I am getting to the point where i feel like giving up on chasing a reliable fat ps3 and just sticking with my launch slim model. That thing has never had any kind of repair apart from a vaccume, once and the thing never lets me down!

Replace all 32 tantalums,then see what happens,could be bad soldering, or you might need a reball, also bad hard drive maybe? Just some thoughts to help.

 

[SeanRanklin]

Replace all 32 tantalums,then see what happens,could be bad soldering, or you might need a recall, also bad hard drive maybe? Just some thoughts to help.

Easier said than done, believe me, lol. Even if it was bad soldering on the capacitors already installed, OR if it was the remaining NECs causing the shut downs, I thought these capacitors cause problems when the system is put under load and demands more power at certain points of use. Which was exactly what was happening with certain games i played. When i would get to that point, the unit would shut off. Therefore it was a trigger that caused the shut down of insufficient power. But now the shutdowns occur randomly, so i feel it isnt a power shortage by the capacitors at fault. But again, who knows.

Replacing the remaining NEC's is completely out of the question now. I'd like to try swapping out the HDD but I'm thinking i might just try to run the unit without a HDD for a while and see what happens. 3/4 shutdowns i have experienced happened when the unit was only just turned on and running under 5 minutes.

 

[Yugonibblit]

Easier said than done, believe me, lol. Even if it was bad soldering on the capacitors already installed, OR if it was the remaining NECs causing the shut downs, I thought these capacitors cause problems when the system is put under load and demands more power at certain points of use. Which was exactly what was happening with certain games i played. When i would get to that point, the unit would shut off. Therefore it was a trigger that caused the shut down of insufficient power. But now the shutdowns occur randomly, so i feel it isnt a power shortage by the capacitors at fault. But again, who knows.

Replacing the remaining NEC's is completely out of the question now. I'd like to try swapping out the HDD but I'm thinking i might just try to run the unit without a HDD for a while and see what happens. 3/4 shutdowns i have experienced happened when the unit was only just turned on and running under 5 minutes.

Those little wafers inside the original nec are like a warped record sometimes inside, they might be shorting out in random places depending on the power demands. I had previously had problems like this until all necs were replaced with tantrums. One console I had these problems it was the hard drive shorting out the read out head. Anything else might be corrupted trophies or game data and possibly game saves also.

 

[SeanRanklin]

Those little wafers inside the original nec are like a warped record sometimes inside, they might be shorting out in random places depending on the power demands. I had previously had problems like this until all necs were replaced with tantrums. One console I had these problems it was the hard drive shorting out the read out head. Anything else might be corrupted trophies or game data and possibly game saves also.

Okay with that being said - can a PS3 operate without a HDD? Most of my post repair shutdowns are occuring when the PS3 is relatively cold, so if it can boot without a HDD, i will remove it tomorrow and test without the HDD for about 15 minutes to see if it shuts down. I will be thrilled if this is actually the problem, as my HDD has been cutting off due to YLOD for about 2 years now, lol.

 

[Yugonibblit]

Okay with that being said - can a PS3 operate without a HDD? Most of my post repair shutdowns are occuring when the PS3 is relatively cold, so if it can boot without a HDD, i will remove it tomorrow and test without the HDD for about 15 minutes to see if it shuts down. I will be thrilled if this is actually the problem, as my HDD has been cutting off due to YLOD for about 2 years now, lol.

Leave it on until you see no storage device found pops up. it take a little time to show up, then leave it on to see if it shuts down with your descriptions of problems.

 

[marciolsf]

Okay with that being said - can a PS3 operate without a HDD? Most of my post repair shutdowns are occuring when the PS3 is relatively cold, so if it can boot without a HDD, i will remove it tomorrow and test without the HDD for about 15 minutes to see if it shuts down. I will be thrilled if this is actually the problem, as my HDD has been cutting off due to YLOD for about 2 years now, lol.

Yeah, it should at least boot past ylod.

 

[squeept]

For ground, I tried both the metal shield and the ground edge around the board, but I seem to get inconsistent results/no results at all when I do that.

I seem to get more results when I ground at the negative pole of the tokins pad, so thats where I was connected when I took those pictures. It's a bit of a pain to get good contact there, since my probes are alligator clips, so I'm going to solder some leads to the pads and connect to those instead.

This cheapo set of probes is the first Amazon result, but it has perfect reviews: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P7M72JX/

With this standard style of probe, you just pop the plastic bit with the grabber off of the end, and underneath it is a pin probe like on a multimeter. Then it's easy to jam the probe in to the vias next to the caps and you can keep it in there securely with one hand while you fiddle with the scope with the other. This should virtually eliminate any interference/bad connections. Since you're going to keep it anyway, that $15 will really complete your kit. Looks like it even has a micro grabber in there, which is great if you dick around with microcontrollers. It can grab on to a single leg of a chip without touching the neighboring legs.