PS3 Noise issues...

[Knoxville]

I think I've mentioned this before but my 40gb PS3 seems to be under the impression that Sony have hired it out as a wind tunnel and I'd really like to get to the bottom of the problem.

From what I can gather there are four fan speeds, idle, one that's probably twice the idle rpm, high speed aka hair dryer mode and finally the fan test mode which is the highest speed the fans can achieve and one that the PS3 can't kick into without me telling it to.

I've taken the entire system apart, there was very little dust in the heatsinks for the cpu and gpu, nothing clogging the vents etc. It wasn't spick and span but it was cleaner than a lot of PC's I've taken apart and there's no way dust is the problem.

I then stripped it down so I could refresh the thermal paste on the cpu and gpu. I put a nice thin layer of Asaka 450 on each because it was what I had lying around. Applied it the same way I would in a PC heatsink install and then put everything carefully back together.

The system will now sit at idle on the dashboard for hours at a time and the fan never goes higher than the second speed, same in game menus. If I start playing Gran Turismo 6 though it takes less than five minutes for the fan speed to go from that to hairdryer mode with the system under load.

I've elevated the system on four little feet so that the base of the console isn't in contact with anything, there's a decent air gap around the whole console, certainly more than there is around my 360 and that's never had a temperature related problem. The only thing I haven't done is take the psu apart, I have fired a load of compressed air through it though so I don't think that's clogged with any dust bunnies.

There are a couple of options left... I can remove the psu from inside the case completely and run it externally to see if that cuts down the case temperature enough to make a difference. Or I can try and pry the heatspreaders off the cpu and gpu to see if the paste under those needs refreshing. However, given that the console's pumping plenty of warm air out the back I doubt there's a heat transfer issue, the heatsinks are obviously working. Something just isn't as efficient as it needs to be to keep the system quiet.

Does anyone else have the same problem with their unit? Or any advice on how best to proceed?

I'm sort of at a loss now. I know it's an old and ailing pet and probably wants putting out of its misery but it's not like I've got ylod issues, just too much noise coming from that big 160mm fan so it seems a shame to junk it!

[Ferral]

My 250Gb Slim was doing the same thing last year. It was getting noisy just watching Netflix with fan going full tilt.

All I did was clean out the dust, like you it was very little in there. I also applied a little WD40 with a cotton bud into the fans sleeve to make sure dust wasn't slowing it down. I also made sure the sensor on the underside of the fan was clean.

After doing that the machine is pretty quiet again.

You can get external coolers for the PS3 which attach to the back of the machine and push cold air into it so it may be worth looking into one of those.