PS3 Yellow Light Of Death Fix - How To Guide

I don't want to bore you with technical facts so just briefly - What causes the yellow light of death on the Playstation 3? It's actually the same problem which is troubling the Xbox 360. Both devices have extremely powerful processing units but with powerful processors and graphical chips comes also lot of excess heat. If you ever placed your hand behind the vents of your PS3 you probably noticed how hot the air is. The temperature at the cores of the processor and graphical chip can climb over 100C after extended gaming. It can get so hot that the solder which connects the processor and graphical chip to the motherboard liquefies. After you turn off your PS3 it cools down and solidifies again. After hundreds of warm up/cool down cycles like this what can happen is that one of the hundreds of solder joints connecting the CPU or GPU to the motherboard breaks disabling the contact between the chip (either processor or graphic chip) and the motherboard. At this point your PS3 cannot power on and you get the yellow light of death error.

So how do you know your PS3 has the YLOD? Well the symptoms are very straight forward.

After your turn your console ON:

1. A green light appears for few seconds
2. Yellow light flashes for about a second
3. PS3 makes 3 short beeps
4. Red light keeps blinking until you power the console off

Option 1:
If your PS3 is still under warranty simply call Sony at 800-345-7669 (800-345-SONY) and tell them what happened. You will have to send in your PS3 for a free repair. Although you will obviously have to cover the shipping costs and wait for a few weeks to get back your console.


Option 2:
Well what if your PS3 is no longer under warranty? Will Sony still fix it? The answer is, yes the will (or they will send you a refurbished one) but they will charge you $150 + shipping and you will only receive a 3 months warranty on the repaired or refurbished PS3. So if you get the YLOD again after 3 months you (which happened to many people) you will have to pay $150 again... I personally do not recommend this option.


Option 3:
"Well, my PS3 is no longer under warranty and I do not want to send it to Sony for $150, what do I do now?" Good question! The answer is simple. Fix your PS3 yourself! I know this might sound scary especially if you are not very tech savvy but it's really not difficult at all! Many people with no technical knowledge successfully fixed their PS3's already.




So what are the advantages of this option?

1. You can be playing your favorite game again in about 2 hours from NOW

2. Professional repair guide will cost you only $30 instead of $150 + shipping that the repair would cost you

3. You will not have to wait for weeks to get your PS3 back

4. It's fun, especially if you enjoy electronics :)

Fixing a PS3 yourself is possible even if you have never attempted anything similar. When you decide you want to fix your PS3 yourself you have 2 more options:

Option 1:
You can look for a free tutorial on the internet. But please be warned that there are risks associated with using a free tutorial from the internet. The tutorial might not show you ALL the steps necessary to permanently fix the PS3 and you might not manage to fix your PS3. Even if you would manage to fix it, the YLOD will come back within hours of game play and you will have to open up your PS3 and perform the fix again. In the worse scenario the tutorial might show you a wrong method or it might be not detailed enough and you will do something incorrectly. This can result in PERMANENT, unrepairable damage to your PS3.

Option 2:

The safer option is to purchase a professional YLOD repair guide. It costs only $37 and reduces the risk of damaging your PS3 almost to zero (of course assuming you carefully follow all the instructions). It also features complete, step-by-step video footage of the repair process with voice commentary so you can see and hear exactly what you have to do. It makes it much easier to fix your PS3 than reading a tutorial or looking at pictures. The worst thing that could possibly happen is that you might not be able to fix your PS3 (this is very rare). In that case you will receive a full refund of the repair guide price. So there really is NOTHING to lose.