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PSA: I thought reflowing a PS3 was total junk science until last month
Honestly, I always heard people talk about the 'oven trick' for fixing the Yellow Light of Death and thought it was just a dumb hack that would wreck your board. Ngl, I avoided it for years, telling folks to just replace the whole console. Then last month, my buddy's launch model 60GB PS3 died and he had nothing to lose. We followed a guide from a guy in Austin, used a $20 toaster oven from a thrift store, and set it to exactly 385 degrees for 8 minutes. I was fully ready for it to just melt into a plastic brick. But we let it cool, plugged it in, and the thing booted right up. It's been running his old NCAA Football saves for three weeks straight now. Has anyone else had a reflow actually hold up for more than a few days, or did we just get stupid lucky?
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christopher3858d ago
My buddy tried the oven trick on his slim PS3 last year and it worked for a solid six months before the HDMI port gave out (completely unrelated issue, he thinks his cat knocked the console over). The wild part is we used a kitchen oven my wife still cooks in and she had no idea until she preheated it for pizza three days later and caught a whiff of burnt solder. She was not thrilled but the console worked perfectly up until the cat incident.
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That Austin guide is the same one I used on my old 360. It's wild how many "dumb hacks" actually work because the original factory solder was just bad. My cousin's been using a reflowed PS3 as his main Blu-ray player for almost two years now. Makes you wonder what other fixes we write off as junk science just because they sound too simple.
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christopher_west18d ago
@angelaellis right there with you. I used to talk trash about the oven trick too until it brought my friend's PS3 back from the dead and I had to eat my words. It's wild how something that sounds like a total joke can actually save a console if you follow the right guide and don't push the temp too high.
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