Yellow Light of Death Explained

It was October 2010, I was playing Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. I had just finished a long session of gaming and took a break. A few hours later I decided to turn the console back on to check on my trophy progress. I pressed the power button only to hear, BEEP BEEP BEEP. The console turned off. The Yellow Light of Death had struck my 60GB PlayStation 3. What made it even worse, was the Enslaved: Odyssey to the West disc was trapped inside, I couldn't retrieve it and it wasn't mine. I had rented it from Blockbuster, and I had to return it in 4 days.

The Yellow Light of Death (YLOD) takes its name from the color the power indicator light appears when the PlayStation 3 encounters a problem when starting up. The name is also a reference to the Xbox 360’s Red Ring of Death, a very similar problem, where a hardware failure causes 3 of the 4 ring segments on the front of the Xbox to glow red. The Yellow Light of Death would indeed be a death sentence however, some small hope remains as it is possible to attempt a fix which works most of the time.

Power Light Indicators

• - Standby

• - On

• - On, Disc in Drive

• - General Hardware Failure (Oh no, not again)

The PlayStation 3 has two indicator lights. The top one (When looking at the console vertically) is the power indicator light. This is usually red if the console is in standby or green when operating. However it can also be yellow. The typical YLOD sequence is this:

• Console is in standby and showing the red light
• Press the power on button
• Console is starting up, the green light appears
• The console makes 3 quick beeps and a yellow light is shown
• The power indicator light flashes red
• The console switches off and goes back to solid red
• Then you cry or scream

System Hardware

The yellow light does not signify a specific problem, officially it is only an error code to indicate a General Hardware Failure. At switch on, the PlayStation 3 will run some internal diagnostic checks to ensure everything is in working order and if not, the yellow light will occur and the system will shut down. Theoretically there are a number of things which could go wrong to make this happen but in practice the majority of the problems, especially in the early units, are related to the GPU or the CPU.

The real core of the PlayStation 3, under it’s shiny outer shell, is a single green board with lots of different components known as the motherboard - see the photo below. There are 2 large squares on the center of the motherboard. One of them is known as the RSX, this is the Nvidia Reality Synthesizer, this is the GPU, and responsible for creating the graphics. The other large square is the Cell Broadband Engine, the CPU and is responsible for the majority of processing on the PlayStation 3. CPUs and GPUs are the backbone of all gaming computers and consoles, and the design of a console is primarily directed at one thing - how to keep these as cool as possible for as cheap as possible.

As the CPU and GPU perform their tasks they get hot, very hot, they can reach temperatures of up to 90 degrees celsius. The gray squares you see in the photo are the primary heat sink, the actual chips live underneath. There are various different layers of metal which all conduct heat and the design uses the fan to extract this heat from the inside of the machine. The heat is an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of intense computer processing but it is damaging to electronics and prolonged overheating can cause problems with all sorts of computer components.

Causes

There is some debate as to the exact nature of the problem here. Sony has never officially talked about this problem. There are various reports and theories out there, it is most likely a number of different elements that have gone wrong to create this situation. Firstly there are reports that some of the chemicals used inside the silicon chip are just not the right ratio or that they are poor quality both situations result in a final material with poor thermal properties. Secondly, the solder used is very cheap and again poor quality. Solder is the special metal which “glues” electronic components to the board. When you are producing millions of consoles every penny saved on poor quality solder adds up, especially when your console is already one of the most expensive ones ever. Lastly, there are reports that the cooling design and the fan used is not optimal and cannot cool the system down sufficiently. None of these claims can be substantiated but these are the most popular working theories online. Whatever the direct cause, it appears that over the lifetime of the console the intense cycle of heating and cooling of the solder can cause it to crack, this solder is essential for creating a continuous electrical circuit between the chip and the board, so a crack can cause a break in the circuit and thus the YLOD.

As far as the PlayStation 3 Forever team goes Sam and Jon have managed 0 YLODs and Matt is brining up the numbers with an impressive 2 consoles contracting the problem. He must have been doing something wrong.

Many desperate PlayStation 3 owners resorted to ridiculous techniques to try and fix their consoles or at the very least get them running again, methods like putting the console in the oven or using a hairdryer to heat it up. These methods were never long term fixes, I suspect they ‘worked’ because they caused the console to heat up and expand ever so slightly so that the pins of the CPU would be in contact again. The hairdryer method worked for me just long enough to retrieve my copy of Enslaved so I could return it to Blockbuster without a fine.

Solutions

There are solutions to fix the issue, some better than others. Ideally the whole CPU or GPU would need to be desoldered and re-soldered in a process known as a “reball”, this is a specialized process requiring tools and skills your average person won’t possess and it is harder to find a repair shop that does this. An alternative process known as a “reflow” seems to be the most common option, which uses targeted heating to melt the solder and let it cool and set hard again. Prevention, however, is the best cure, if your console is still functioning normally you can try and prevent the problem from happening by opening up your console and replacing the thermal paste (the original thermal paste was another low quality material), giving the whole console a good clean out from dust, and if you want to take things further you can even upgrade the heatsinks.

The Yellow Light of Death is a fascinating problem that upset many many gamers during this time leading to all kinds of irrational repair attempts. I don’t think it was quite as common as Xbox’s Red Ring of Death, but there is nothing more heart breaking than your console failing in this way especially when you consider how expensive they were to buy. Fortunately this type of large scale failure doesn’t seem as common in modern gaming. The closest thing I can think of is the “joy-con drift” problem on the Nintendo Switch, which provided you have proof of purchase, Nintendo were fixing for free, in the UK at least. If any of you are still rocking your original PlayStation 3 consoles and have yet to succumb to the YLOD. I wish you and your PlayStation 3 good health and many more happy hours of gaming.