Comment on Xbox 360/PS3/(to a lesser extent) Wii owners represent
DacoTaco@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoOk so, let me set this all straight.
The wii had nothing to do with the gpu but with the die of the gpu that nintendo had designed and kept secret.
Inside the gpu die is both the gpu (hollywood) but also an arm core called starlet. It runs the security software and thats where (rarely but happened) things went wrong, as it was always running code, even in standby. This had nothing to do with ati.
And the ps3 was not what you said. The ps3’s problem was that the ihs wasnt making a good enough contact to the core so the heat of the cpu didnt transfer well into the cooler. You can fix this, but is very tricky and is easy to permanently damage the ps3 in doing so ( you have to cut the silicon under the ihs without touching the die or the pcb, remove the silicon and do reattach it with less glue ). This could be contributed to the manufacturer i suppose
heythatsprettygood@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Your description of the Starlet is more accurate, yes. However, its heat output consequently caused some of the issues with the ATI designed parts of the Hollywood, as it exacerbated the thermal issues the 90nm variants had, and that a better designed chip would have been able to handle.
The PS3’s IHS was not the problem. There was decent contact and heat transfer, maybe not as perfect as it could have been (there’s thermal paste instead of it being soldered into place, which is why a delid and relid is fairly essential if you have a working 90nm PS3 due to aging thermal paste), but definitely not big enough of a problem for a properly designed chip to cook itself at the operating temperatures of the PS3 (75-80 temperature target on the RSX on an early variant at full load). The Cell B.E. next to the RSX that uses more power (consequently outputs more heat) has a similar setup for its IHS, but IBM did not make the same design mistakes as NVIDIA, and so we see very few reports of the CPU cooking itself even in those early PS3s.
DacoTaco@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ye no, ive have a ps3 that ylod which i reflowed back to life. After it was working again i started digging and the temps the core was reporting wasnt even close to the ihs that i measured with thermal couple. Also the thermal paste is on top of the ihs, not under it and it wasnt soldered in place. Early ps3’s did cook themselves. Less than 360 by a long shot, but they still did!
Also, side note, its funny how some 360’s rrod was not due to the heat issue but can also be caused by power supply failure or the plug being faulty. Thats how i got and fixed my 360 🤣
heythatsprettygood@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
If it’s a reflow, your PS3 is running on borrowed time. A reflow heats up the chip enough that parts of it expand enough to make the GPU work again temporarily (the solder bumps on the bottom of the silicon attaching it to the interposer line up their cracks again), but eventually you’ll be back to square one. The real fix is to replace the 90nm GPU with a later 65 or 45nm variant that has the fixed design (search up “PS3 frankenstein mod” for more). There is thermal paste both under and above the IHS - the one under for taking the heat from the silicon up to the IHS, then the top layer for taking it to the heatsink. Here’s an image of a delidded RSX and Cell to show (apologies for the quality, was the best one I could easily find). Image
PS3s did cook themselves, but not to the extent of the 360.
It is funny to see how there are probably so many misdiagnosed 360s out there with bad power supplies that have been subjected to being bolt modded (shudder) or something. It doesn’t help that the three red lights just mean “general hardware fault” without doing the button combination to get further information. I guess at least more helpful than the PS3, whose diagnostics were only made available recently due to a key being cracked.
DacoTaco@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I know what i did to the ps3, and i know what needs to be done. I barely use the ps3 so its fine for my case. The real fix can also be to redo the ihs so the solder doesnt crack or get damaged again because of heat. Also, ps3 also got a lot easier to debug with syscon, which was also only (relatively) recently descovered. Sure made debugging the ps3 easier haha. Ive left the connection available on my ps3 for future usage hehe