Yellow Light of Death

The Yellow Light of Death (often abbreviate YLoD) is a common problem which affects non-slim models of the Playstation 3, although there have been some reports of it happening to slim PS3's as well. The YLoD is similar to the RRoD of the Xbox 360 in that both are usually caused by the cracking of the lead-free solder used on the CPU and GPU due to thermal fluctuations. The solution is to either reflow the solder (using a heat source such as a heat gun or conventional oven) or have the chips professionally reballed, which involves removing the chips and reattaching them with fresh, lead-based solder.

Description

For a typical case of a YLoD caused by a motherboard failure, the following happens when you touch the power button:

• 1. The green and blue lights come on for around 1.5 seconds, and the fan turns on.
• 2. The fan and blue light turn off and the green light turns yellow for about a half-second.
• 3. The PS3 beeps 3 times and the yellow light turns blinking red.
• 4. The light will remain blinking red until you touch the power button again, returning the console to a steady red standby light (or you can hit the main power switch).

YLoD's often occur suddenly. Usually what happens is that the console shuts itself off during gameplay, resulting in a blinking red light. Attempts to turn the system back on result in a YLoD, although sometimes the system will come back on. Even if the system does come back on, it could foreshadow a future YLoD, and I would recommend taking steps to prevent it from occurring, though at that point it may be inevitable.

Warning Signs

The YLoD most commonly affects older fat model PS3's, especially launch models with hardware PS2 backwards compatibility. If you have a fat PS3, you should keep an eye out for these warning signs.

• Fan blowing cool air under heavy use: After playing a game for an hour or so, put your hand behind the PS3 and feel the air coming out; if the air is cool, then that means the fan and heatsink are not properly dissipating the heat. A healthy PS3 should blow out hot air when under heavy use, and the fan should shut off quickly once the system is shut off.

Causes

The YLoD indicates a general hardware failure and could be related to the motherboard, the power supply, or even the blu-ray drive (unconfirmed).