What Causes the Yellow Light of Death?

Having your PS3 crash while you are trying to turn it on or while playing games can be extremely annoying and frustrating. Unfortunately, the yellow light of death is not something that just goes away like Sony suggested.

If you read the manual, they recommend you turn off the game and allow it cool. Unfortunately, no one has reported getting their console back on using this. If you are curious and want to know what causes yellow light of death on the PS3 console, here are a few of the most common causes.

1. Power Surge

The power cable is pretty delicate and fragile. Unfortunately, it looks like Sony never planned for things like power surge. So, when there is a power surge, it causes a partial disconnect of the power cable resulting in a burnt diode or capacitor.

2. Over Heating

The guys who designed the console were either short sighted or did it intentionally. If you have opened the console, you will find that the HDD and the PSU are both in close proximity. Since they both generate huge amounts of heat, this often results in a melted contact point or soldered wire.

There is little or no room -except the vents- for heat to circulate and leave the console. Thus, wires melt, soldered points become weak and the board becomes weak. The combination of all these often contribute to what causes yellow light of death.

3. Dust

Who would have thought this could do a lot of harm. However, dust is a major factor in what causes the yellow light of death too.

These three are the primary culprits; every other problem stems from them. So, now that you know what causes yellow light of death in PS3, what can you do to fix the problem?

1. If you already have it, send it to Sony for repairs. It will cost you $150, a formatted HDD and 6-12 weeks without your console. Apart from this, you never get any recommendations as to what you can do to prevent a further recurrence. In fact, it sometimes looks like Sony just wants us to keep paying them after buying their “cash burning” appliance.

2. The second and best option is to repair it yourself. There are a few proven instructional guides with step-by-step videos that you can watch, replicate what they’re doing and voila, your PS3 comes back on. Even if you aren’t tech savvy, you can still do this as they are very easy to follow and are explained in layman’s terms.

Apart from this, you get to recover your saved games, get it back up in less than 2 hours -tech savvy people can do it in less than 60 minutes- and prevent a recurrence following the recommendations you will get from the guides.