PS3 Reflow

[Ash]

I have a 1st generation PS3 which finally gave up the ghost on Friday with a Red Light of Death (RLOD), it would not boot up.  After discovering what options I had, I realized that I neither wanted to pay Sony another $150 to fix it (because it was out of warranty) or spend another $300 to buy a new one.  

So what is a guy to do but fix it myself.  I spent a few hours scouring tons of sites, videos, instructions on how I could fix the problem and came across the PS3 Reflow fix.  Basically after completely disassembling the PS3 to get to the heart of the machine, the motherboard, I took a heat gun (purchased from Lowes for $24) and melted the solder connections for both  the CPU, GPU and surrounding chips, allowing the solder to "reflow" into a their proper connections. I then applied new Arctic Silver Thermal Compound ($10 at Radio Shack) to the GPU and CPU before reassembly. Now I can get into the reason why this is the needed fix if anyone is interested in a secondary post but suffice to say after a half hour of cooling I put the whole thing back together and she works like new.  

Now I'm positive this isn't a permanent fix (all the videos I've seen say as much) but I rarely use the PS3 for games these days so it might last me quite a while.  

If anyone is interested in the instructions I used, let me know and I'll post them.  I just wrote this up in case this situation happened/ or might happen to a fellow PS3 owner.

[Manic Velocity]

Since I also have a 1st gen PS3, this is good to know.  I haven't had a problem with mine yet.