Was picking up a replacement fan for my PS5 on Tuesday and this kid, maybe 16, was showing off his Switch with a clear purple shell he'd done himself. I mentioned I always skip shell swaps because I figure the plastic quality drops or the buttons end up feeling off. He just said "dude, it's literally the same mold, just different color, and if you mess up a screw you can fix it with a $6 driver set." That hit different because I've been telling people to avoid them for like 4 years without ever trying one. Has anyone else felt weird about custom shells and then actually done one, did the feel change at all for you?
I've been swapping shells and sticks on Switch controllers for fun since last year. Never once looked up the torque for those little Phillips screws on the rails. I just snugged them by feel. Last week I stripped one clean on a shell I was doing for a friend. Looked it up after, Nintendo lists it in the service manual at 0.3 Nm. That's so low, basically finger tight. My wrist was way past that the whole time. Has anyone else ruined a rail from overthinking it? Or do you guys just use the old two finger snug rule?
After the 47th swap I stopped double-checking the ribbon cable alignment and that's exactly when I got sloppy, so I went back to my old habit of counting clicks and now my success rate is honestly scaring me, has anyone else hit a milestone that made them more paranoid instead of confident?
Honestly, I finally cracked open my launch PS5 last weekend to replace the fan and clean the heatsink. Ngl, I was expecting some dried paste, but what I found was practically powder, it had crumbled into flakes around the edges. The stock application covered maybe 60% of the APU die, and I could see bare metal spots. I used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut this time, applied a pea sized dot, and my fan noise dropped from jet engine to whisper in about 2 days of testing. Did anyone else find that the factory paste from Sony degrades way faster than the 2 to 3 year window people usually mention? I'm curious if my unit was just a bad batch or if this is common across the board.
Had a stripped screw on a GameCube shell last week and grabbed a $12 extractor set instead of my usual drill trick, honestly wish I did this back in 2019. The bit grabbed on the first try and I didn't have to worry about chunks of plastic flying everywhere, has anyone else made the switch or am I late to this?
Stopped by that retro console store off 35 last Saturday to grab a dead original Xbox for parts. The guy behind the counter threw in a spare 80mm fan for free. Got it home, ziptied it to the GPU heatsink without checking the airflow direction. Turned it on and it sounded like a jet engine revving for takeoff. The fan was blowing straight down onto the board, pushing hot air everywhere. Swapped it around after 20 minutes of laughing and it runs quieter than my laundry dryer. Has anyone else made a dumb airflow mistake that took way too long to spot?
Watched three different tutorial videos last month that fully skipped the paste and now I'm fixing a friend's OLED that runs hot and crashes after 20 minutes, anyone else seen this shortcut wreck a console?
My buddy Mark who runs a repair shop in Phoenix told me to skip the OEM thermal pads and just buy a cheap roll of 1mm stuff, cut to size. I thought he was crazy, figured it'd be too soft or slide around, but after replacing the fan and pads on my launch Switch last weekend, it's running cooler than it ever did. The trick was he said 'use a hole punch for the screw holes' and yeah, that stopped the pads from bunching up under the heat sink. Anyone else tried the generic rolls instead of the precut kits? I'm curious if the 1.5mm works better for the OLED model's bigger die.
Taped the fan wires down with 3M Super 33+ after my heat shrink tube kept slipping off the connector in a tight fit near the heat pipe. Six months of daily use later, no shorts, no noise, and it was way easier to redo when I swapped the fan last week. Anyone else skip the fancy stuff for plain tape in cramped shells?
After my 200th Switch shell swap, I still cracked two clips on the ribbon cables and had to redo the whole backplate. Everyone in this group talks about it like it becomes second nature, but in my experience the tension between the housing and the board just never stops being fiddly. Anyone else hit a milestone count and start questioning if the veterans are just gatekeeping their own patience?
I was at a local retro game swap in Austin last Saturday and this older guy selling mod chips for the original Xbox just watched me struggle with my solder job for a bit. He finally said 'you are fighting the board, not joining it' and then showed me how he tins the pad first and lets the wire do the work. That simple phrase made me realize I've been rushing all my installs, trying to beat some imaginary clock instead of being patient. I went home and re-did a PS1 mod I botched twice, took me 45 minutes but it worked on the first try. Now I keep catching myself holding the iron like a weapon instead of a pen. Anybody else had a random stranger's two cents totally change their technique?
Pulled the old port off in like 10 minutes with my hot air station. Then spent 3 hours fighting the solder mask on the board. My flux kept balling up and the new port kept shifting. Ended up having to use a stencil and fresh solder paste from a tube I bought online. Has anyone else found the PS5 HDMI board way harder to rework than the Xbox Series X one?
Man, back in 2021 I was doing all my Switch mods on the kitchen table with a $15 iron and no fan. Just held my breath when the flux smoke got thick. Felt like a real modder you know? Last month I finally bought one of those $60 desktop fume extractors after my throat started feeling raw for days after a big GPU reflow job. Night and day difference. I set it up next to my workbench in my garage and now I can breathe easy while doing hours of soldering. Why did I wait so long? Anyone else put off buying safety gear til something started hurting?
I opened up my launch model Steam Deck last month to replace the battery and found the screen cable was held in place with a strip of plain electrical tape, not the clip the iFixit guide showed. Turns out Valve used a revision of the board that skipped the locking latch entirely, and the tape was factory applied. Anyone else run into factory tape or other odd shortcuts on early production units that the teardown videos miss?
Spent $14 on a no-name thermal pad kit off Amazon last month for my PS5's SSD slot. My first load times actually got worse, then the console shut down mid-game after 45 minutes. Turns out the pad was 1mm too thick and the heatsink was barely touching. Lost the pad money plus about 2 hours pulling the whole thing apart and redoing it with a name brand 0.5mm set for $9. The cheap ones also shed little bits of gunk that stuck to the SSD connector. Anyone else run into this or got a brand that actually holds up without the markup?
Been swapping heatsinks on my 2018 PS4 Pro for a couple years now and I keep seeing people obsess over the exact pea vs line method in threads here. I tested all three patterns across 12 repastes last month with the same paste and cooler pressure, and the delta between them never got over 2 degrees Celsius. What actually mattered was cleaning the old paste fully with 91% isopropyl and letting it dry for 10 minutes, plus making sure the four screws went down in a cross pattern. My first two attempts ran loud because I rushed the cleanup, not because my dot was off center. Has anyone else found the paste brand or mounting pressure swinging more results than the pattern?
Had my launch PS5 for 3 years and the fan was getting loud. I used some generic thermal paste I had lying around from a PC build a few years back. Temps dropped maybe 2-3 degrees which was pretty meh. Then I borrowed my buddy's Thermal Grizzly stuff and the fan barely kicks on now during God of War. Does the brand of paste really matter that much or did I just mess up the first application?
He said his $30 iron from Amazon has lasted 4 years with no issues while my fancy Hakko station just died after 6 months. Why do we always assume spending more means better reliability with modding tools?
I was talking to my buddy Mike last weekend at his place in Austin, he did a Noctua fan mod on his PS5 about 4 months ago. He said his internal temps dropped by like 12 degrees under load, I always figured those aftermarket fans were just for noise reduction. Made me wonder if I should try it on mine since I can hear the stock fan ramping up during Warzone. Anyone here had mixed results with fan swaps on these newer consoles?
My dad told me to spread it like butter on toast, so I did a thick even layer on my PS5 APU and now my temps are 10 degrees higher than stock. Has anyone else gotten bad thermal paste advice from an older relative?
Turns out the screw I used for the SSD mount was just barely touching the aluminum backplate, and that tiny contact point created a hum that took me three evenings to finally track down with a multimeter... has anyone else dealt with weird noise issues from metal on metal contact?
I put a Noctua fan in my PS5 last week and it was silent for about 3 days. Then it started making this weird clicking noise every time the console spun up. Checked my install, double checked the screws, even re applied the thermal pads. Ended up swapping it out for the stock fan again this morning. Has anyone else had issues with aftermarket fans not holding up after a few days?
Everybody online says to use a tiny dab of thermal paste and let the cooler tighten itself. I followed that advice on my PS5 SSD mod. Wasted 4 hours getting error codes because the heatsink wasn't seated right. Had to go back and hand tighten each screw in a crisscross pattern like an engine head. Anybody else ditch the "tighten until it stops" method?
I went to the Retro Game Con over at the convention center in Portland and walked around the modding row. This one guy had a PS2 slim stuffed inside an old GameCube shell with a working disc drive, and I stood there staring at it for like 10 minutes. It hit me that I've been overthinking my own projects, trying to make them look factory fresh instead of just fun and creative like that. Has anyone else had a build idea pop into their head after seeing something totally unexpected at a show or swap meet?
I stopped by the one on Broadway last weekend and checked out a refurbished Switch Lite - the screws were stripped and there was crusty white paste leaking out the vents. Has anyone else seen this with their pre-owned consoles?