I bought 3 PS3s for $50... how bad could it be? 

"Was it like this from the factory?!?"

"people in the old days are wild. they use erasers as thermal pads"

@@afizsouji these days we use two droplets of thermal uranium

I'd call them an idiot because it's still stupid to this day.

This is what I imagine for every single repair.

I bet the other 20 hours he spent on this but didn't film is him swearing in frustration lol

ikrr

At least one of those three others is the guy who covered the history of the PS3s.

So true! I love these videos.

Michael MJD is another one. Highly recommend his channel!

I'm sure he washed his hands really well after.

I wanted to wear gloves just watching it!

What do you call a fish wearing a bowtie? Sofishticated.🤣

@@theskullemoji just seeing this, and you made me laugh 😂

l'm glad that Matt actually shows us the passage of time, by not trimming his beard, it puts into perspective of the struggle of starting a project and getting to it when you can,

l'm glad that Matt actually shows us the passage of time, by not trimming his beard, it puts into perspective of the struggle of starting a project and getting to it when you can,

The first computer bug recorded was a moth in a supercomputer

@@morgengabe1 true lol

The PS3-PS5 have had some rather bad issues with cockroaches.

a shot-vac against this thing is obviously needed.

just like the how it got its name lol

It's not just an overheating issue, the gpu literally delaminates from the substrate.

@@lucyinchat what

@thicc doggo tsmc made garbage chips and a whole bunch of chips that affected any company that used them (apple ati nvidia primarily). So anyhow all phat ps3's are going to die.

I read "swarm power supplies" and that was still correct.

Literally one of the reasons we call problems with computers bugs is because going back to when vacuum tubes were used rather than transistors literal bugs would sometimes cause issues. Its a tale as old as computers

l've watched a lot of board and console repair videos, but never in my life have l seen someone solder capacitors to a bent paperclip and then solder that to the pads. It's amazing that that worked. You're a madman. Big fan!

I've watched a lot of board and console repair videos, but never in my life have I seen someone solder capacitors to a bent paperclip and then solder that to the pads. It's amazing that that worked. *You're a madman.* Big fan!

I've watched a lot of board and console repair videos, but never in my life have I seen someone solder capacitors to a bent paperclip and then solder that to the pads. It's amazing that that worked. You're a madman. Big fan!

I've watched a lot of board and console repair videos, but never in my life have I seen someone solder capacitors to a bent paperclip and then solder that to the pads. It's amazing that that worked. You're a madman. Big fan!

Plus, they're probably stolen

@@arjdroid without probably lol

@@arjdroid Likely not. My local classifieds site has many as-is fat PS3 models in the $10-30 range. Even a working fat console with two controllers and games lists for ~$100. It's not exactly a high value item worth stealing. Two had actual defects, and that good working one may have a software problem the owner was unaware of and assumed to be hardware.

it does not happen in humid areas of the world. I live in a humid area and never seen a repair guy wearing antistatic braces, gloves or anything, it just never happens.

@@parsipax6337 it’s less about antistatic, more about handling a PS3 with a bunch of dead cockroaches inside.

69 likes nice

Hello good sir. Thanks to your post, I did the same thing to my PS3 a couple of months ago and it works perfectly. Thank you.

Legend

Madman indeed

I really wasn't planning on opening up my PS3, but this piqued my interest.

I'm an electronics engineer. Why do you say they're now useless? The caps are tantulum, he's used some pretty heavy gauge wire and they're really not that far away. I'd be much more concerned if these were ceramic caps - but tantulum isn't going to be doing too much at higher frequencies. At those frequencies, absolutely the introduction of more inductance is going to be an issue.

@@dman8734 Not capacitors themselves, the extra length of the path to the board is the problem... Extra resistance and inductance, which totally defeats the point of the capacitors being there for handling transients in the first place. Also he didn't even use copper wire, but a paperclip which not only is not great conductor,but also is ferromagnetic, so skin effect is a huge problem a those frequencies. Capacitors could be ideal, but with that connection he made them essentialy useless.

Another electrical engineer here. Had similar concerns. Adding extra trace length is not ideal by killing higher frequency filtering + making EMC radiation and immunity worse... But obviously it seems to work sufficiently fine. And as long as it does work, he was right in doing so. Sure you shouldn't put this into series production. But We've all hacked prototype boards up like that and surprisingly they are still working, though by all rules they shouldn't.

A pack of disposable medical-grade nitrile gloves is always useful for these sorts of things

same

And do it outside...

Just came here to say the same thing, do you want us to send you gloves?!

Eh, the skin is fine. It's not like it's biologically dangerous, just gross. Those thin medical gloves have a tendency to tear easily when even slightly brushing up against the kind of sharp hard metal angles you find inside computers

Some people just really want to game without dealing with the work stuff. They get a nice working PS4 while offloading hardware they likely didn't want the hassle of finding buyers for or perhaps there was a birthday coming up and they wanted it as a gift, had no money to buy it and didn't have enough time to sell PS3's before the birthday so they made it a good deal for you to improve the odds of you accepting the trade.

Wtf 💀

Kind of sounds like the PS3s were stolen...

@@CraftingCake I thought about that, but it really doesn’t make sense to me. it’s not like a phone that you bring everywhere. Don’t think someone would break into a house to steal game consoles lol.

@@imaxvicrackheads gonna crackhead

Came here to literally type this comment lol, although I had forgotten the channel name

🤓

Yup, good rec. I am not super versed in the ins and outs of these kinda things, but that video is certainly worth checking out.

@@creepysmilingcarl9742 The bumpgate incident - to the melting power connector incident

cough tsmc the fab maker cough made crap chips for its customers cough ati apple nvidia cough

why are they very clearly stolen?

intresting. I always wondered why certain video game manuals showed that opening with all the card readers and yet my own PS3 didn't have those

yup, the chrome trim is the easiest way to know. They also had a 60 GB HDD, but that could have been replaced since.

@@Muscleduck yeap i still have mine. its the first model i believe. I got it like a month after the ps3 released

Unless you got the 20 GB model that didn't have the card readers.

@@Matt92Machine imagine having a 20GB PS3 lol

This also works with the switch pro controller

Oddly enough, they don't seem to work with Goldeneye 007. Every other game works but that one and it's the only PS3 game I still want to play xD

@@beardalaxy Gran turismo doesnt work either :(

But how do you exit from the game?

@@qwertykeyboard5901 for me i keep a ps3 controller around just to turn my system off and navigate menus

Currently suffering without covid here at 3:20 am

Currently suffering without covid here at 9:22am

Not COVID but kinda sick, at 6:00 AM

How

Aaay, Corona-Buddies

Didn't you saw the error code 1002 point out a bad VDD for the RSX? That's not a BGA problem, if it was, it would appear as 3034, 4402 or 4411. The Nec/Tokins were the problem on that unit, reported by Syscon and confirmed by swapping them. Heat would temporarily fix something in the case of BGA related problems.

Completely aware of this and I agree completely. The reason I mentioned it was simply to refute in the video where it is stated about the NEC issues being "common".

@@viniciusvidotto7536 You can't necessarily say any of this in absolutes. The caps were *a* problem, and may have been killed by a different problem, which could be anything from an intermittent power supply failure to, at absolute worst, cracking of solder beads under the GPU (which turns out to be not that uncommon on these systems, unfortunately). Again, I agree that the capacitors had indeed apparently failed, but given the age of the machine, a failure at this point in time is possibly below the life expectancy of that part, very possibly indicating a related but separate fault that caused this failure, and at the very least, the possibility of more than one point of failure, even if intermittent, should not be ignored. Please excuse any bluntness in my tone, I simply want to avoid people being misinformed and permanently damaging their irreplaceable devices in a misguided attempt at repair.

@Brooke M. I figured the caps died from the uh, bugs and gunk that Matt cleaned out. All that disgusting stuff made -it- them run too hot, and then they got KO'ed.

Oh hey Octal! I didn't realize it was you at first 😅

me too!

Same

To be fair, that ps3 was already on the brink of death, and he had 2 other functioning ps3's to spare, so I think it's ok.

What about ps4?

Now granted Sony advises to this outside for safety reasons

@@samiwilmot7413 Ps4 doesn't have this, far as I know.

@@andrejpopovic52 also newer modell of PS3 don't have this feature anymore. I think it is only available for fat PS3s

@@DoomWarriorX Yes. Since you have to flip the power switch.

You’re probably referring to specifically the Ps3 models that contained a 90nm RSX GPU which that would apply. However, later fat ps3 models contained 65nm RSX Gpus which did not have such and issue, and replacing capacitors would fix them(generally, still read syscon errors before doing anything to your system)

@@DeadlyHellhound Well I don't think Matt specified what version the PS3s in the video were aside from not being backwards compatible with PS2, and I'm not sure if he meant that they are not the first models ever released with hardware level backwards compatibility, or if he meant they don't have the software level either. Keep in mind that what I do know about the issue I learned from RIP Felix and his extensive look into the subject, but if I remember correctly the 65nm ones can still have this issue, it's just less common. As for the capacitors, the amount of times they have been actually the cause of the YLOD was rather low, but changing them revived the console in question for a while in almost all cases because of the heat involved. As I said in the original comment it's possible that Matt just got very lucky and it was a matter of the caps giving in, but I think an update in the future would be a good idea no matter what.

@@xiii9354 judging by the insides and the thick heatsinks included with this system, im going to guess that it is a P01 model (second to last fat ps3 revision). The first non-ps2 compatible ps3s were the G models, and those models had a vastly different chassis inside but also had 90nm GPUs so theyre often found with dead GPUs. H models came soon after and had a similar chassis as pretty much all the later fat models shared at that point, although H, J, and K models had separate wifi/BT boards from the motherboard but still had the same form factor. H models also were the last 90nm models so you’ll find those junked as well. The only concerning models with 65nm GPUs would be the the first PS3s that came immediately after the H models, which were the J and K models. Even so, I rarely encounter any J or K models with faulty GPUs (even my K model ps3 I had since it released in late 2008 still works perfectly fine with original caps and everything) Keep in mind, RIP-Felixs video is based off mostly theories with a good amount of evidence to back up those theories. He never puts everything off as a fact simply because he hasn’t gathered THAT much information to really set everything in stone just yet (theres still a lot of development and experimenting regarding PS3s, this info is still relatively newish). So while I would agree that J and K ps3s with 65nm GPUs could be a concern since those models released immediately after the H models with faulty 90nm GPUs, there still just isnt enough proof that 65nm GPUs should be of any real issue over 40nm GPUs. There just isnt enough logged information to back up these claims (more people rather go for the 40nm gpus clearly since they are technically better GPUs anyway. But thats not to say that 65nm GPUs arent also a viable option)

@@DeadlyHellhound That's genuinely a very informative comment, thank you. I think I'm just rather cynical of the cap replacements, I got 2 fats for a similar price as Matt, both with YLOD. I went into it thinking that there is a fairly easy fix now (didn't remember it was the caps, only that I saw a video about it) but after doing some research and seeing that video from Felix it was like being punched in the gut. One of them might have some sort of HDD related issue judging by the fact that it doesn't flash the HDD LED while the other does, so not all hope is lost. Still, knowing that it's a design fault even if this issue can be fixed, the RSX will be a ticking time bomb. The two I got were a C and a G model, the C being the one with no HDD light.

I mean we could say he got lucky but he did check the error code before doing the replacement error code suggested that it was the capacitors, the problem with replacing the capacitors is that most people don't check the error codes before replacing them and just assume that it'll work. It might still die later, although if it does we're probably not going to get a video from him because he's definitely not skilled enough at replacing the RSX.

How does a hole console get stolen lol

@@julius4858 Probably burglars came in his house and stole it

@@polipod2074 Then sell it in a sketchy neighborhood in a lot of 3 for $50.

@@julius4858 I saw an animated video by Man in a Motel where he admitted to stealing the PlayStation of his friend's neighbour because the neighbour left there house unlocked.

Oh, sorry about that. I'll leave it back where I stole it tomorrow.

The RSX is *not* the cpu, it's the gpu That's what having the problem, but it's also not *just* thr balls, but the underfill too

did you end up doing this?

it's grand cuz he cleaned it after and there was no electricity in the thing

iPhones are a great indication of why right to repair is so unfathomably important.

Kapton tape, not Capton tape.

@@nikkiofthevalley ye my bad, shoulda called it polyimide tape as Kapton is a trademarked/brand name.

Lol

I second this. Very interesting to see the extremely deep dive on the history on that video.

ahh de memories 😂

shhh *plausible deniability*

watching one video doesnt make you an expert. NEC/TOKIN chips are notorious for going bad in multiple electronics, not just ps3s, so stop saying its a "myth". Electronics are complex and can have many points of failure. In this case the error code was for the noisy voltage due to the bad caps, the yellow light didnt even show up.. totally different things

Just did same comment, thanks to RIP Felix! About the NEC caps, they are notoriously excellent and fail mainly because of a non-adapted pcb design. The "notorious" you are talking about is mainly based on Toshiba laptops. We rarely hear about the other electronics using those caps, for various reasons, but mainly because they'r usually not used in consumer electronics where people will try to recap.

@@joonhkt simply not true, laptops and all kinds of things use them, and they often cause failures because they rapidly lose their capacitance. Again, multiple things can break in electronics, there isnt one cause. IE something else may be ruining these capacitors, OR the capacitors are going bad causing the issue themselves, both can happen. I just found several laptop posts where these caps were causing a common issue

@@joonhkt Even for PS3, these caps are well known to degrade over time and cause failures, which could be alleviated if you add some custom heat dissipation

@@MElixirDNB You said "all kinds of things use them and they often cause failures" I was wondering if you have any evidence to back this up The only the only information I can find about failing NEC capacitors in other products is in the one Toshiba laptop that from what I seen were poorly design causing the caps to die faster You seem to know a lot about them so could you tell me all these other broken or faulty products they have found themselves in and are the cause of?

Why would he need to

Becuase it’s gross

the fent ps3 is crazy

Makes sense, the fan needs to spin smoothly and not get destroyed

Right the video I wanted to suggest. They almost published at the same time!

And it's not really recommended to replace the NEC/TOKIN with tantalum capacitors (it's also in the video)

thank you so much for replying with this, I got scared the moment he mentioned the NEC Tokin

(This is a dumbed down explanation of events to avoid major spoilers)