For Your Own Good: Installing Custom Firmware on the PlayStation 3

[Author's note: this article will go in-depth on PlayStation 3 homebrew, custom firmware (CFW), and more. This is legitimately about further preserving your system, backing up your games, and enabling more features. There will be no mention of piracy.]

I have a problem. It is very rare that I can own a game system (portable, home, or otherwise) without modifying it in some way. Whether this is a physical modification or a software-based alteration, it can sometimes (most times) be more fun and rewarding to me than actually playing any games.

As of a few months ago, the idea of modifying a PlayStation 3 sank its fangs into me. I hadn’t realized how robust the homebrew, hardware mod, and custom firmware situation was, so the thought took over. I became overtaken by a compulsion to research and clean and tweak and monitor temperatures and listen to the fan and… you get the point.

Let’s talk about it.

Home Who? Custom What Ware?

Here’s a little background on me just to set the scene (and pad for time to keep you sitting on this page long enough for our SEO to see a nice boost).

I’ve been tinkering with PCs since around 1993. My father was taking basic computer courses at a local college and would bring home PCBs and floppy disks of rudimentary software. He’d show me how the circuits worked, software sending signals to speakers, etc. Sure, I was really young, but I loved Wolfenstein 3D and I wanted to know how it worked. Long story short, I would go on to save every old family PC and eventually cannibalize them to build my own Frankenstein machine.

I stayed pretty far behind on the console side of things, in terms of current systems. My first console was a Sega Game Gear, likely kicking off my love affair with portable gaming. From there, my chronology was a Gameboy, Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis, Gameboy Pocket, Sony PlayStation, Dreamcast, Gameboy Advance, Xbox, PlayStation 2, Nintendo Wii, and then the PlayStation 3 (to keep this list manageable), in that order. Hell, I remember mowing two dozen yards in my neighborhood to save money for the Xbox bundle with the Jet Set Radio Future / Sega GT pack-in.

When I found out that the PlayStation 2’s expansion bay could be fitted with an HDD and that the system recognized PC peripherals via the front-facing USB ports, my eyes lit up. After exclusively using that functionality to play Final Fantasy XI for over a year, a friend of mine sent me a link to a website that contained information on how to use a specific Action Replay variant to trick the console into reading homebrew. I had a new mission. If my memory serves me, you’d effectively have to use the USB thumb drive that came with the Action Replay to run a modified system configuration file while also having a modified save file for a specific game that would trigger some sort of reaction that cracked the console’s restrictions wide open.

Now I say all of this for more than just nostalgia tripping and telling you how cool I was at thirteen years old. A lot of what this PlayStation 2 exploit would enable the system to do would be in the same vein of what I’ll manage to get my PlayStation 3 to do in 2025. Here’s a list in no particular order:

• Rip your PS1 and PS2 discs directly to the internal hard drive.
• Disable region locks for DVDs or games.
• Run unsigned code to allow for ports, emulators, homebrew games, etc.
• The ability to run patched image files (think English fan translations).
• Enable your system to act as a developer kit.

Outside of the era’s obsession with ripping CD collections obviously leading to some unsavory uses of the disc ripping feature, a lot of this enabled functionality would provide some really great quality of life changes to my media consumption. As a child of an immigrant, we’d always get a ton of PAL PS1 games and DVDs from my family abroad. Now, I could actually play those things. I could, over the local area network, now run media from my computer to the PlayStation 2 and watch my videos on my bulky CRT TV instead of my bulky CRT monitor at my desk. And, most importantly for the longevity of my fascination with this activity, I would open the door on playing game systems I never had in the form of emulation on the PS2.

Being able to play Super Nintendo games I’d only heard about in whispers on my actual TV and not on my computer with an oversized keyboard was huge. It would later lead me to using similar exploits for the original Xbox to turn my system into a media center and a way for me to play Super Smash Bros. or Final Fantasy VII in front of a captivated audience of my grade school peers. I thought I was cool as hell.

So, that’s what you can do with homebrew. How about we discuss the PlayStation 3?

It Came From Japan

I’ve previously owned fat launch models, the slim mid-life refresh, but never the super slim (Alessio: sorry, they always looked very cheap to me. Matt: They are… but I still have one as my daily driver. Slidey-lid anyone?). However, I haven’t owned any version of the console since about 2019.

Generally speaking, I’d been keeping an eye on some of the really cool Japanese versions of the system that a favorite eBay seller of mine, Lucky8 Japan, would list. And, while I’d bought from them before (love my Japanese “Happy Mario” anniversary Gameboy Micro), I’d not pulled the trigger on one of these PS3s. If we’re being honest, it was mostly because of word around the web always stating that PS3s are all on the road to bricking, the cheap solder won’t last, the systems aren’t ventilated properly, they’ll all crumble to pieces any day now, etc. But, I finally threw caution to the wind, partially because of this site, and pulled the trigger on a variant I’d found very appealing, the Metal Gear Solid 4 Hagane (Japanese for “steel”) Edition PlayStation 3.

Now, I’d legitimately not known that this version of the system actually did ship in the United States, but from what I can tell, the number of units in the western market were far lower than our eastern counterparts. You can see more information about both in this press release archived via PlayStation Generation.

These bad boys, specifically the large launch units, 40GB mid-cycle versions (like the Hagane), and whatever else pre-late-2008, require some TLC and prayers to keep that Yellow Light of Death at bay (See our article on The Yellow Light of Death). While some of the online discourse about bricking systems and losing PS3s left and right is outsized, these situations actually do happen to the larger model consoles far more frequently than the slimmer siblings. But, as I’ll discuss, there are measures you can take to keep your system healthier and hopefully running longer.

But first, I had to see what I was working with.

What Goes On In That Chasis Of Yours?

What steps can I take to better preserve my PlayStation 3?

Thermals, thermals, thermals, are very important. This means the airflow needs to be unobstructed (though follow the intended flow through the system, so don’t drill any holes or cut anything open). This means dust has no home here. It also means that the 15+ year old thermal paste (God, I hate how old I am now) needs to go. This means you’ll need to get comfortable with disassembling your PlayStation 3.

Now, there’s some discourse online about how thermal paste manufacturing companies have created an overblown reliance on “reapply the thermal paste” as the end-all-be-all troubleshooting tip of Reddit and beyond, but it’s also not incorrect to think the heat sink could use a little help after almost two decades. For scientific purposes, I’ll show you the before and after of my testing:

My research tells me that a runtime of less than 100 days and a shutdown count of less than 1000 actually means this system wasn’t used very heavily. So, I kind of lucked out, and you’ll see another reason why I think this vendor really treats their supply right momentarily.

In terms of CPU and RSX temperature values, ~65-68C is supposed to be about right for light use on a large model system, while ~70-72C is where a more demanding game may bring the system. Anything close to 80C is bad. That threshold is considered overheating by Sony’s own standards. This can either happen due to airflow, the singular fan in the system not spinning as fast as it should, or because the heat of the chips isn’t playing well with the sink the way it should be (hence the replacement paste). Now, you might be wondering how you can see those handy readings on your own system, well, that’s where all the talk of jailbreaking, custom firmware, and homebrew comes in.

There are a thousand flavors of how to best get custom firmware (CFW) on your system, many dependent on console model and your official firmware (OFW) version, but for this article, and my sanity, we’re just going to look at the models released before the first slim redesign and using an actual CFW and not the exploits that must be reenabled every reboot like the newer systems require.

I’ll try my best to link to all of the best resources I came across on my journey. Front and center, there are a lot of sites and videos that are of a variety of ages spouting conflicting things sometimes and it’s very confusing, so hopefully I can take some of the hard parts out of this process for you. That being said, this isn’t a step-by-step.

Kicking off, if you have a PlayStation 3 whose firmware is above 3.60 (I believe) then you’ll need to do things differently, as covered in this wonderful video by Mr. Mario2011, a channel I definitely recommend for all console modding info. I was lucky enough that my system arrived with 3.55 OFW installed on it. What that meant was that I could load a CFW on a FAT32 formatted flash drive and update the system like you would for an official offline firmware update. The flavor I used was CFW 4.92 Evilnat. There are quite a lot of different CFWs, but this one was one that I saw recommended a lot and after reading the feature guide, I realized it was probably the most beginner friendly. It has a lot of great system-wide controls in easy to find places and feels like the product of a long-running fan community in the late stages of a passion project.

Also, I ran my CFW install at the same time that I replaced the internal hard drive of the system. In 2025, 40GBs (36, I believe, after system required space is accounted for) is not a lot. So, I went out and bought a 1TB SSD to use instead. You want to be sure that it’s a 2.5 inch SSD. Anything larger won’t fit in the system. Likewise, any drive sizes larger than 1TB can create some odd data overflow issues with the console’s operating system that will lead to you running out of space and boot looping your console eventually. I believe the actual threshold is around 1.7TBs, but I wouldn’t chance it and just stick to 1TB or smaller. This Instructables post breaks down the nitty gritty for you to follow if you’re doing this at home. And, once the drive is in and the system prompts you to format it on boot, you’ll have the opportunity to upgrade the OFW from a flash device afterwards.

With all of that done, you can now access some pretty great system information by navigating to the Network portion of the XMB and scrolling to the top (if using the Evilnat version I mentioned), where it has a new folder filled with tools. You can monitor temps, adjust your fan speed dynamically, disable the system boot up beep, change O and X for confirming (if you want to flip a Japanese console, for instance), and more. I believe, in the parlance of the homebrew world, that these settings are all running via “Cobra”, which appears to be some sort of functionality layer running atop the system OS. You can also do all of these things using webMAN, which is a homebrew multi-use application that allows you to back up your discs to your internal drive and enable more tools, including being able to monitor your console temperature, drive space, and more using a simple browser tab and your console’s IP address. I find that PSX-Place is also a great resource for questions.

Now, back to our thermals discussion. The system, arguably, underclocks the fan speeds because even when the fan hits 50% speed, it becomes quite loud. The default settings usually keep it around 28-32% I’ve noticed, which can be too low to help keep temps down. And rising temps are what? The enemy. Heat is the enemy of all electronics. You can set an automatic “dynamic” fan curve either using the Cobra tools or the webMAN ones. I set mine to automatically start adjusting its speeds once the system hits 70C and it seems to work great. Also, please don’t put your system inside of an entertainment center or alcove or against a wall. You want this baby standing tall and in an open space for all that heat to not surround the system. It’s all like a PC.

Alright, anyway, let’s tear this sucker open. This RetroWolf video was really helpful to understand how the screws and components interact with one another, what order to pull things out to avoid issues, etc. Once you’re in, you’ll want to use some isopropyl alcohol and q-tips or cotton pads to clean your CPU and GPU so that there is no old paste present. Same with the heat sink. Also, get rid of any and all dust. Again, I lucked out and found my system to be relatively clean. These folks really took care of this thing.

Now, let’s see what my temperature readings were reporting after the process was complete.

I Have Seen The Six-Cell Processor With My Own Eyes and Lived

Okay, so 40C is a pretty huge drop. Also, the readout is stating “SYSCON”, or system controlled fan speed, because I was using webMAN for the adjustments and not Cobra, which provided the reading. A more realistic and in-use depiction of my heat on a daily basis is actually around 66-68C while in the middle of large set pieces in a Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. So, it’s not 40, but it’s certainly not 77C when sitting on the XMB. Fun fact: the XMB isn’t a pre-recorded animation. The system is generating all of those particles in real time, which is neat, but also legitimately taxing on the idle thermals.

But, that’s all a testament to what a good cleaning and thermal paste reapplication can do. Even cutting my temps down by 10-15 degrees is huge and worth the effort. Especially because, and I didn’t mention this before, when the PS3 runs digital PS2 titles, official Classics or personal backups, it pulls far higher temps than when running PS1 or PS3 titles. Apparently to run the built-in PS2 emulator (if you don’t have a backwards compatible launch system) the OS boots into a super barebones version of itself, disabling a lot of functionality in the process, and something happens to how the system monitors its own temperature. So, definitely do these cleaning steps if you plan to play tons of PS2 games and be sure to manually set your custom temperature before booting a PS2 title. The dynamic curve won’t work because it can’t dynamically check anything while you’re in PS2 “mode”. I’ve seen the best results at holding a constant 40% fan speed. Not super loud and keeps temps down (I checked them for testing immediately after closing PS2 titles at their most intensive seeming parts and rushing to the temp check function as soon as the XMB relaunched).

Another thing that will really help with heat is not having to use your disc drive anymore. You’ll see faster load times and you’ll have one less hardware process running. And, if you wanted, you could just FTP your backups using FileZilla and your system’s IP address, so you wouldn’t even necessarily need to use the disc drive to perform the backing up. CFW legitimately provides life to systems with damaged or nonfunctioning disc drives.

One quick note on disc backups. I ran tests with a PlayStation copy of Metal Gear Solid, because of course, a PlayStation 2 copy of MTV Music Generator 2, and a PlayStation 3 copy of Metal Gear Solid 4. Through my testing I found that when using multiMAN (another homebrew application that seemed to work better for me for backups), it took roughly 2 minutes per gigabyte of data. So, expect something like MGS4 to take a little over an hour.

Okay, So Why?

I’m not quite sure why I felt so moved to write this article or spend the money and time to make this all happen. I think part of it was knowing that there was a system I hadn’t cracked into before and the thought of a new conquest seemed like fun. Part of it was also wanting to share the process with other folks to hopefully collect a few pieces of information that I’d found in various corners of the web to make things a bit easier for others. Ultimately, I think it was just about the feeling, the compulsion, and just the fun of doing something technical and with my hands.

Only time will tell if I’ll actually play the system a ton, but I know I’ll at least be revisiting Metal Gear Solid 4 on this baby for our remastered season of coverage on Metal Gear Mondays next year.

I hope that this was helpful to someone in some way and I hope that for all the console modding vultures with keen eyes and sharp claws that I didn’t say too many incorrect or misinformed statements and that you’ll spare my life this one time.

Alessio