Applying Arctic Silver 5 on a PS3's Cell and RSX.

Hey guys; now we have summer and the temperatures are rising and I for one am sick of hearing the PS3 (60GB-US, the one with EE+GS) kick into the 4th or even 5th Gear of Fan-level. So I decided to upgrade the thermal dissipation with the lovely AS5, but I'm not quite saddisfied with the result. (I had better results on another PS3 with Liquid Metal Pad, but those are too expensive and not at hand right now)
So anyhow, to the point at hand. Some of you might be familiar with the heat-dissipation-system of the PS3, but for those who aren't, here are some details:

The whole thing still assembled, minus the 160mm fan:
http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dscn1346sr9.jpg

Both the Cell and the RSX are protected by a heatsink; while the cell is your usual (rather long) core below the heatsink, on the rsx there are 4 GDDR3-chips in each of the 4 corners of the whole chip.

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/4148/chipsso5.jpg

The heatsink itself is made out of 2 parts, one for the CPU, which is the big part and a small part for the GPU, I think this picture says it all: http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/3000_large_heatsink.jpg (look at the ugly amount of grease stacking up)

The heatsink is fastened on the chips, by some clamps on the other side of motherboard (with other words; it gets "pulled" towards the chips). http://www.consolezombie.com/Images/SonyPS3Disassembly/ps3-heatsink-bracket-screws.jpg

Now, the problem is once you attach the heatsink, you can't move it... This makes so, that I can't twitch the HS to spread the blob/line; is that a big problem or would the Heatsink still do the spreading well enough? Would the break-in help out with that? By using the line-method on the cell and 5 blobs on the rsx (rice-corn in the middle and 4 of about 1/4 the size in each of the corners) managed to avoid fan-stage 5 which it reached with the standard paste; but stage 4 is still too much/loud...

Given I was not happy with the results I went ahead and tried the "spread it yourself"-thing, by wrapping my finger into a plastic bag and creating a nice and even layer. To my happyness this seemed to work quite a bit better, in fact it reached stage 4 a lot later (around 15 minutes later). Still reaching it was not acceptable, so I opened it, to find the CPU Heatsink perfectly covered with AS5, but the GPU-Heatsink barely even touched the RSX :shadedshu I'm sure it was not a mounting mistake as even when I tryed to reseat it, the gpu would not really get into contact with the heatsink, which also explains the tremendous amount of grease Sony put on those chips.

What would you guys do in this situation? I thought about using the "spread it yourself" on the cell, while using the blob (actually 5 blobs, one the size of an uncooked rice corn in the middle and 4 a 1/4 of the size of it on each corner) on the RSX. But then again, when I think about how the Cell got hot, without spreading it myself, I feel kinda unhappy with that choice, or do you think this behaviour would clear up over time (break-in period, I always only tried each config for 2 hours, each with a 20 minute "cool down phase" after the first of the 2 hours.
Is there any way to accelerate the break in, as in get the PS3 really hot (unplug fan/block vents) and let it cool of again once it reaches around stage 10 of fan-level (which is the last before the security turn-off kicks in; I had to do that to burn-in the LMPs on another PS3)?

P.S. Anyone saying something about "dood never open a console", or the like, should just stfu and get out of this thread.

And anyone giving a constructive reply will obviously be rewarded with a "Thanks" and my gratitude!

MilkyWay said:

no need to be nasty about it pal, people are free to disagree if they like then again if your so confident you should be able to persaude people its okay to open up your console

anyway on topic youll void the warrenty straight away by opening up the ps3

id use arctic cooling mx-2 its a better paste by a few degrees and dosnt need to get heat up or anything like that and it is non conductive its completely metal free!

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1148/arctic_cooling_mx_2_thermal_paste/

spread it a little and then let the cooling flat it some more clean the sides up with a cotton bud or tip as the US call it

Click to expand...

Sorry, it was just my attempt to be funny Didn't want to offend anyone

My PS3 is already out of warranty, so that it not a problem; besides I've opened and tweaked/fixed or tryed to fix around 5 PS3s by now.
I've never used Arctic cooling mx-2 yet, I just found an AS5 lying around at home (most likely around 1 year old, but kept in a very chilly place) and thought I could attempt this "mod", as I already did it more than once with Liquid Metal Pads.(http://www.coollaboratory.com/en/product_metalpad.shtml)

Just now I did a "burn-in" and it seems it worked. After letting the PS3 properly cool down, it hasn't reached Stage 4 ever since (could also be because temperatures are starting to get low ). But if it can't be done with AS5, I'll certainly take a look at the AC MX-2 you proposed, the non-conductiveness and better performance of the AS5 are really interesting.

Thanks for your reply.

Some more precise ways of how to spread/apply AS5 or another paste would be very welcome; I plan to make this 60GB as silent as them new 40gbs

Hey guys, thanks for all your replies.

Adding a new fan inside the ps3 crossed my mind aswell, but there is only very little space, so that is quite hard to achieve. Lapping the heatsink would be very efficient I presume (they have a crazyly rough surface), but given the contact-pads are connected to the whole cooling-grills, it is very likely that I would get an uneven surface by lapping the thing.

The AC would certainly be a cool thing, but it wouldn't pay off for just the summer

So the only real viable and simple option is to replace the grease. I've ordered an MX-2 now, if the AS-5 doesn't break in until I get that paste, I'll be trying to do it with the MX-2.
As it seems you absolutley have to spread that paste yourself? On the AS5 site they suggest the blob or line-method (which I'm currently using), but does that apply to MX-2 or other pastes aswell? The thing is, that as I said in the initial post, the gpu won't make full contact with the heatsink if I even out the paste on the heatspreader myself. Should I just use more of it in that case? I was just worried if it then would act as an insulator.