REVISIT - PS4 Slim BLOD 

Even though technically it was a fail. Your perseverance and commitment just show the dedication you have. Nice work and please never stop trying.

Great patience and perseverance, I would’ve thrown that board so far I would’ve been entered for the world frisbee championships 👍

Wouldn't have imagined that APU would be that hard to get off. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us, even when you can't fix it.

For bigger ground plane chips like that you really need more consistent heat like preheating the board and hotter hot air. As well as masking off areas with thermal tape so the heat doesn’t soak into the surrounding board as much

That must have been tough to take Vince, but nobody can fault the effort you put in to it, you are an inspiration to all of us mate.

Great job going to that length - you've proven the fault! Remember these chips get super super hot. The amount of power they consume is very high, it's totally possible for shorts to occur. It could be that the regulator that supplies it failed, and passed the input voltage straight into the APU - causing the APU short. The other thing that crossed my mind (before you removed the APU) - if you get a short scenario like this, you could try powering a specific power rail with bench PSU - limit current to say 1A, and feel temperature of caps / components. If a cap had been the cause you could have found it that way, either using freezer spray or IPA to see where it clears first etc. In this case that APU would have eaten the full 1A and probably got hot or maybe burned up a trace. For that reason its perhaps better to start with a lower current on the PSU (eg. 250mA, then 0.5A) etc.

The area around the APU chip may have gotten overheated to the point that there may be a microscopic crack in a trace or the board along a related circuit.

Proving the fault is the second best thing other than fixing it. Good job Vince. Also you air station is a surface mount device rework station which means other than caps and resistors or a legged chip it really cant handle it this APU is a great example of needing a re flow station.

Vince you a braver man than me taking apart a working console to fault find a faulty console Even though you have had success with this in the past All the best of luck mate I've been watching you for year's now on RU-vid

You got my hopes up with a revisit so soon. I thought you'd got the fan spinning! :)

Vince you really are the man, love you’re commitment and passion 👍

I enjoy watching these videos keep it up mate

I was watching a channel called HDD Recovery today and wow, he reballed a control chip like a pro using solder paste on the board side and his method of reballing the chip made me think of you m8 All he used was a hot air station, a generic solder paste mask, some solder paste and some solder to create the balls on the chip and he got 100% connection so easily.

You could inject 1 Volt into the line at max amps and see if the APU gets hot 1 volt should be save for any power rail, great video 😊

You can check this without desoldering components. Supply this capacitor with voltage. Set 1V and start with 300 mA then go slowly to 3A something will heat up on board and you will know what is shortage. Try not to go higher than 1V. 1V is safe for all components on board.

Making soup at half past midnight, bread or toast.... in comes votre toast ... decision is made. Keep up the good work fella and stay safe Vince!

Great video as usual! Don't understand any of it but still end up watching the whole way through 😂. Keep it up! 👏

That was kind of gut wrenching but informative. Good job.

Vince you are the best person in the world. I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS.

Nice video even if u did not fix . It help us learn a lot. These APUs are super sensitive to surges and things of that sort.

I do love your videos such patience and helped me out so much

Cannot wait to tell my future high school teacher that does this stuff all of this. Great video Vince- in the future, I might repair my own stuff! If I do, I might as well make my own videos of it too.

I love your videos I learn a lot

'the patience of Job' has now officially been updated to 'the patience of Vince'

This video was great and makes complete sense. Whenever I'm doing a HDMI port or chip repair I know I have a loose pin or bridge because when I put it back together to test i usually get the BLOD then I recheck my work and always there is a bridge or loose pin. I also got most of my knowledge from watching you figure things out. Thanks for the videos they are very helpful.

Also worth mentioning that this particular chip consumes around 170W of power - consider the heat given off on a 100W incandescent bulb. Heat is always a bad thing in electronics, however these chips run crazy hot anyway!

This felt like Torture Porn for Electronics about the time the chip turned red and the caps began falling off lol.

Hey Vince, you might have a bit better luck removing chips if you preheat the entire board first. that entire board is acting like a heatsink and by the time you are reaching a temp high enough to melt the solder, you have put in so much localized heat that it is damaging the processor and nearby components. just a thought. keep up the awesome vids mate.

Good chance it was a cap on the apu pcb. Pretty impressed you got it off with you hot air fan

Hey Vince I've got to the part where you were mentioning taking off the APU (and obviously cringed) but now I'm at the part where the southbridge is about to come off. Just to let you know that the southbridge isn't tied to the board and can be replaced if needed. You can pick them up on ebay for about £15 pre balled, or if you need any I can grab a couple off dead boards and reball them for you so they can be used in the future 😁

I LOVE how you just dont give up until something is fixed... Wanna come help fix the Country Vince? Love, BoJO ;-)

Glad you revisited it. You can't win 'em all, but at least you can get some sleep now ;)

At the time a lot of electronics were using the lead free solder which was a nightmare for electronics. Heat was not so much a factor as it was just poor for maintaining connections.

As a rule of thumb: Big copper traces are designed to deliver high currents. These traces are power supply lines for some power hungry chips like an APU.

Love u mate Vince ur my fave RU-vid channel

Yep. A failed APU. I think you got it right. May have been easier to remove if heated from bottom of board.

And another video lovely surprise thank you 🙏

Hi Vince, not sure if your gonna see this considering this is a year old video but reflowing / reballing the ram is something that could fix this. Its not a guarantee but its something ive seen fix the BLOD on a PS4 Slim before.

Modern CPUs and GPUs suck down dozens of watts of power, but also need to run off of a very low voltage in order to not burn themselves up. If you have a 50 watt CPU core that runs off of a 1 volt supply, that means it's drawing 50 amperes. Now a CPU or GPU is not a simple resistor, which means that the current draw will not increase steadily with voltage. There will come a point where it suddenly draws a lot more current. What's important here is that a multimeter must apply a voltage to the circuit it is measuring and then look at the current to determine its resistance. Your meter is assuming that the circuit is a simple resistor and just divides voltage by current--since a CPU or GPU is *not* a resistor, the resistance reading you get will vary depending on what that voltage is. Now keeping that in mind I took my fluke 117 and used another meter to measure the voltage it outputs. In ohms mode it outputs 0.5 volts. In continuity mode it outputs *2.5 volts*. So if I were to use the continuity mode to measure across the power rail of a chip, it would essentially be trying to power the chip (since the chip probably runs off of less than two volts). So of course it will draw a ton of current and make the continuity buzzer go off.

Vince is that crazy punk that we all need but don't deserve. Not all heroes wear capes, but some heroes shove probes in awkward and unexpected locations. LOL! 😜😄

I watched the entire first and 2nd vid😂 I was rooting for you. I suppose we're unlucky ass well. Our ps4 is maybe 2 yrs old, and doesn't get a lot of use compared to my nephews or gamers. It hadn't been played in a while but I bought the new assassin's creed for a Christmas present last week, after downloading or whatever, my husband played for about 10 min or so and the system shut down. Now when I press power the blue light comes on and the fan for a couple seconds, then powers off. Press power again, only a beep noise, no power. Press power again blue light, fan couple sec. SHUTS DOWN. I find it pathetic that so many have had this same issue from these garbage systems.

Great video mate... I would assume now since those point we're going to HDMI Port... So it might be that the current backed from the tv maybe... Bcz it happened to my ps4 once and it just made huge sound... And my PS4 turned off... Also my tv turned off... It was sony led tv as well... Lucky my PS4 and tv weren't damaged permanently... They they work perfectly fine even to this date

You gotta heat it from both sides of the board at the same time to make it easy. That chip in the center prevents the solder balls from melting in the middle.

28:45 - the CPU on the original PS4 had just shy of 4 _billion_ transistors, that's a later model where the put the GPU on there, so along with the cache the are well over 4 _billion_ transistors on there!

You can get specialized hot air nozzles for BGA / QFP / PLCC type ICs. Two basic types, a big square nozzle, or 4 smaller rectangular nozzles that line up with the edges of the chip. The later is what you probably needed for this APU, direct the heat to the edges so it goes underneath the chip.

My brother in law has fixed two sony bluray players recently. Both had a faulty diode in the power supply. Most of those components will be the cheapest they can get away with...

He didn’t win the silicone lottery. Some chips just last longer than others.

Louis Rossman would flip his shit if he saw this haha ;)

Nice of you to do this follow up, was interested what caused the blue light of death.. Also I'm wondering about your gear, could you tell us what stuff you are using?

Great job on this one.... I used to work with this guy.... I literally never saw him, without a scowl on his face, and a lit cigarette in his mouth.... But I did respect the hell out of him. He was 100% tenacious, and 100% committed, and quite stubborn. When we were out at a site, he would not quit, until we fixed it.... He sent us back to the hotel one night... I was determined to stay with him, for many reasons, not the least of which was safety.... but he wasn't having it. We're riding back to the hotel in the truck, another guy with me says "there's just no quit in that dog..." Why am I telling you this?? Because, Vince, you Sir, are quite persistent, and quite tenacious. You might not be as far gone as my former colleague, but... Nobody could accuse you of not trying.... I feel like you proved it was in that chip.... which is just very unlucky for your friend. Let's not kid ourselves, even now, as the PS5 is being assembled in factories, they know darn well, in 5 years, the PS6 will be out.... So, whatever. If it lasts 5 years, that's great. and not that Sony is bad... Apple & the others are just as bad, if not worse.... So sure, it was a "fail" I guess... But you really did prove it was unfixable.... So I say, great job.

What happened to your ESR meter Vince That will read across the capacitor only and most times you don't need to pull capacitors off if they are good.

Don’t know if you still do this but just a good practice is to use the red probe on ground and the black probe on the components you’re measuring since you’ll work with lower numbers and it makes it easier to keep track of them

After an evening watch the shower radio vid whilst disassembling a Soviet quartz watch for parts, I thought I would go onto World of Warcraft for a bit of zap and kablooey and another MMV vid appears aieeee Sod WoW as at moment is boring as congealing cheese on toast, fresh cup of Biscuit Brew tea and off we go. Would love to see another watch video, Vince's watch video got me into it all and now have a respected Soviet collection, my daughter on the other hand wants to find person who got me interested in it as I have covered every available nook, cubby and surface with.... watches, watch tools, watch parts and more watches hehehehe Cheers m8 :)

Jee Vince I was nearly going to call 999 there when I seen all that smoke. Mick 🤣🤣🤣👍🍻

What about the mini chips on the main one and what’s under the shinny part in the middle where the thermal paste goes

thank you for all the awesome videos you have created. i would love for you to make a video on the equipment you are using and where did you purchase it. just to let you know, you're videos are helping me to stay sober and active. i appreciate all that you do and i hope you continue to make videos. YOU'RE NOT ONLY SHARING KNOWLEDGE BUT SAVING LIFES. you motivate me to keep up with my sobriety and to stay busy. once again, THANK YOU!! = )

Looked like the top of the APU package was also covered in SMD caps. Those could have been shorted. If they were on top it means they either wouldn't fit on the die or they produced excess heat. Not fixable most likely but it could have been SMD components on the package of APU were bad rather than the APU silicon.

Hi Vince keep up doing these fixing videos 👍👍 P.S you heard the PS5 if the PS5 is released make a video for beginners and also you heard about the xbox series x if xbox series x is released make a video for beginners I will keep watching your videos.🎮🎮📷📽

It could have acctually have been a power spike that fried the apu

got so excited with the notification, he gonna fix that broken PS4, INTERESTING!! lol

There may be a microscopic crack in the APU itself. Them things do happen, and can cause shorts on the APU, either way it would be unfixable. Good video Vince. Better luck next time

PlayStation: You will not have to worry about the YLOD on the PS4. Also PlayStation: We changed the light to blue.😂

Sad to see such a new expensive thing brake and be unfixable. Anny way good entertaining video! Thank you!

one thing.. if you think a line that runs to a place you can not check is responsible for a short, cut the line before removing the balled chip. if the fault disappears when you cut the line, you know whatever is past that line is responsible. and if you are wrong, running a wire to reconnect the cut line is easier than reapplying a chip ..

This is not as much a revisit as it is a lesson on how to demolish a ps 4 board. Do like ur vids so keep m coming :)

Hey Vince, I just took my water damaged switch lite to a repair shop and they said something already shorted out and there’s nothing they can do. Do you think there’s anyway it’s still fixable or is it a lost cause?

if you are tracing a short circuit in motherboards, its better you Zero Off the internal resistance of your probes when you short them(not sure if your DMM supports that) due to some of the power lines in the APU are less than 2ohms and this will lead you to think they are shorted. Remember, the APU is using low voltage but high current supply.

@My Mate VINCE 15:10 where did you get that no clean flux, i looked everywhere for the serial number and couldn't find it anywhere ??

Motherboard: the Melter strikes back.

Great find.

It was worth a shot ..Surprised you got it off without a bottom heater ...or BGA station Those boards take so much heat Ridiculous amount of heat .. What is crazy is the slim models I’ve been seeing a lot of dead APU’s I’m thinking since they slammed the board down and made it thinner .. it’s not able to dissipate the heat through the board so the APU takes a lot of the heat ..Which is destroying them Or poorer manufacturing 👨‍🏭 Maybe one of these days when I get some time I will mess with some of that APU’s ..I wonder if capacitors on the top of the chips are shorting out 😳 And causing most of the problems with the APU’s

That's why you should preheat the board with something to around 200°C and then apply the extra heat from the soldering station at max airflow, then the chip would come off easily.

the resistance of the gpu cpu apu is small and this is ok, usually the crystal falls off the substrate, you need to solder the bga chips with the help of the bottom heating.

First I thought you'll literally fry the motherboard. This is something what makes an amateur like me anxious.

I'm in my bed, i guess i will sleep later. Thanks for the video !!

Such low resistance is normal for Gpu, Cpu power rails. But the short you found, was too low considering your leads resistance it was almost at zero + good board confirmed it. Its the same part of the circuit.

Ah what a pitty but I still enjoyed the videos they were very interesting I've learned new stuff I recently got a free og ps4 with blod luckily it just needed the washers😂😂 and I got a v2 controller on adverts for 25 euro fully working

What the best soldering iron for ever smaller motherboards like mobile phones ? Great work by the way 👍

Wish they would really start socketing CPU/GPU/APU in game consoles, but I suppose it's easier and cheaper to have it wave soldered. Makes it hard and more expensive to fix, which I suppose is what the console manufacturers are banking on, so you have to buy a new console when it fails.

"Downloading a golf game". Last Of Us 2?? 😂

put 1v and amp on the line and check for sort.this is only way.nice video

When the power button of my PS4 slim is pressed, the blue light shows for 30 seconds ( it doesn’t flash. Just a blue light) and switches off. I thought it was the APU? But could it be the power supply?

Great Video! Thank You. 😀

THAT BOARD IS TOAST!! 😱😱😅😅😂😂🤣🤣

Vince, one thing to note is that : Large traces (other than ground) => Power supply for a chip. See those small black square components surrounded by smaller components ? Those aligned, fairly close to the APU. These are switching power supply controllers. They convert the 12V to 1.x V needed by the chip(s). The big trace starts there. The reason the trace also went to the hdmi chip is that it is a shared (or main) power rail. The voltage source is shared between less power hungry components. What you got is a secondary voltage rail being shared to other components. The APU needs some of it, but not that much. It probably comes out of the lonely switching regulator. Multiple aligned switching regulators are called phases. These are linked together to supply enough of a certain voltage. Up to 16 for high end computers. Those are main CPU power (1.x V), while the lonely one is probably 3.3V Sorry for the English, I hope this helps you figure some things out. I'm no PlayStation 4 expert, but these things are fairly standard. Also: Some APUs (or CPUs, chipset) are sometimes glued down so they don't move during soldering.

I would like to do hot air soldering like you are doing but I have no idea which tools to buy. Any suggestions ? (Btw, I already have some experience in soldering)

You REALLY need a better hot air gun. I suggest getting the Quick 861DE (The 1200 watt model) I've been using it for a while now and it's really good and it's cheap compared to the other professional hot air guns.

You need a BGA rework station or at least pre-heater for such large BGAs Vince.

That board curved up real nice, Vince. You can kiss those multi-layered traces goodbye. 😔 I guess that’s why it’s important to “pre-heat” the board first (not sure if an oven would work if you use low heat settings). But at least we can rest this case now.

I've seen BLOD happen on these units when 1 or more ram chips go bad. saw TheCod3r take care of that problem by checking a thermal camera while the system was flashing the blue light and he could see one of the chips get much much hotter than the rest.

Hi did you account the flashing lights of blue death ?

I smashed my Ps4 pro. 400 bucks down the drain. It was a top hit close to where the cooler. Fan is on the top left of it. It turns on and tries to Rev up. I can see the playstation logo turn up and then dissappear. Eventually it shows a screen that says its a ps4 storage issue. I checked it and most people say if it's clean and won't work it's most likely the HD storage. Could it be that a nice hard whack only broke the disk drive or is this just a general failure that pops up if the board etc is damaged. Any hints appreciated. I might save myself another 400 with a 50 bucks drive.

Can you share a good APU supplier/stencil? I habe a slim that i wanted to fix, but cant find a good IC (EU)

haha i just got done watching the first one then i see this. nice!

Thanks @My Mate VINCE, now we know how we can quickly Check it's caused by the APU or not. When this CAP is shorted it's 100% the APU.

I Wonder, on a so large chip, would the flux actualy hinder the air from reaching the middle solder balls?

Great video vince, :) I’m having a severe issue with my white ps4 CUH-1216A purchased off eBay in February, warranty seals intact, opened the console myself to inspect it, after updating swapping hard drives nothing, Dropped it into a local repair shop in UK they’ve kept it for months but just reposted it I’ve checked it over compared to when I sent it checked for shorts nothing. The shops got it to play Rahman for hours and RU-vid videos without crashing works online with 1 or 2 games it has the error C34878-0 not to sure what to do now Sony quoted £125 for another refurbished unit power supply fan and disc drive fine :) if you can let me know, if you’ll take it in for a video that will be perfect! Peace MKTEK :) cleaned it up best I can.

Have you tried to use a cheap thermal camera or isopropyl alcohol to see where the short is? With the alcohol you just look to see where it evaporates the fastest. Luis Rossman shows how that works in one of his videos

Hello Vince, trying to fix the a ps4 with the same model as your, my is missing the resistor on pin 19 of the hdmi. would you mind measure the value of the resistor for me. that resistor is locate between the hdmi sock pin 19 and hdmi ic pin 36, thanks Vince. NVM -- I found it.

Would it have been possible to put a jumper wire to the USB and fan, and fake it that way? Sure, the fan would run all the time, but with that slim case, it would be better off like that. That way the repair wouldn't have been a total loss. Your friend could have used it until he got his PS5 perhaps? By the way, love all of your videos Vince. By the way, why are you working on the floor? Did your wife take away all of your table space in the house?