[Señor_Striatum]

I am in the middle of fixing a YLOD CECHA01 in hopes to have it running and rigged with additional cooling modifications by Christmas for my son. With that said, I am interested in installing a temperature display in the region specified for the sd cards and what not. This temp display requires a 8981 series molex power connector (typical one with 4 conductors) and I am currently exhausting my options on how to power the unit.

The molex connector requires the following cable configuration: +5,ground,ground,+12. So what immediately caught my attention was that the CN502 4pin on the mobo (the connector on the mobo used to power the bluray drive BMD-001) uses the exact pinout refer to http://ps3devwiki.com/index.php?title=Bluray_Drive.

Do you guys think it would be safe to split the cable connecting the Bluray drive and mobo to power the temperature display? Keep in mind that I have the CECHA01's APS-226 PSU which has 12V 32A & 5V 3A output. The only potential problem I see is that perhaps the voltage and amp output at the CN502 4pin is regulated to supply just enough power to supply the bluray drive and nothing more. Any help or opinions are much appreciated.

[Herman]

I would draw power directly from the PSU or from the motherboard rather than mess with the BD drive cable.

[KillerBug]

If you pop the top off the PSU you can easily solder to those voltages. Are you sure it needs both 12V and 5V?

[Chris9191]

Originally Posted by KillerBug If you pop the top off the PSU you can easily solder to those voltages. Are you sure it needs both 12V and 5V?

I am 99% sure the temp display only needs 5v (well mine does)

[Señor_Striatum]

Originally Posted by KillerBug If you pop the top off the PSU you can easily solder to those voltages. Are you sure it needs both 12V and 5V?

So the display I am using is also a fan controller a friend of mine gave me a while back. It is a Scythe KAZE MASTER ACE 3.5" Bay Fan Controller. I simply disassembled the whole thing and carefully broke a piece off so that I knocked off 3" of metal so I am left with approx .5" of hardware to realistically fit in the PS3...I will post pictures tomorrow.

After looking up the unit turns out that it does use the molex cable but can be powered by either 12v or 5v. Considering that it will be displaying 2 temps and regulating two fans (considering using one for the PSU) is it better to go 12v?

Also to get this fan controller to work I had to rig a regular pc fan connector in place of the PS3 fan connector. By doing this I no longer have PWM regulation and I do not have a data cable to give the rpm data which normally would be displayed next to the temperature. So I have tested this out and all works fine I just need to find a place for the display and the best alternative to power it. I am currently using a pc psu to test the efficiency of the fan controller but would rather not need an additional PSU.

[KillerBug]

If you can use just 12V, go that route.

Looking at the pictures on their website, it would appear that this fan controller works by decreasing the voltage supplied to the fan. If this is the case, I would strongly recommend against using this to control the fan. The PS3 fan is designed to get full supply voltage all the time, and to be controlled by a PWM signal. Using supply voltage to control the fan speed will work fine at first, but will burn out the fan motor over time, and eventually the fan will just stop.

As for the RPM data, it is a bit tricky with a PS3 fan because there is no actual RPM data line available. It is possible to measure RPM by the small pulses on the ground line going to the fan, but no pre-made device is going to do that since you need to write the code for such a device for the specific fan being monitored. For my mods, the fan speed percentage displayed is just what my mod is sending to the fan...and is never read or adapted from RPMs.

[Señor_Striatum]

Originally Posted by KillerBug If you can use just 12V, go that route. Looking at the pictures on their website, it would appear that this fan controller works by decreasing the voltage supplied to the fan. If this is the case, I would strongly recommend against using this to control the fan. The PS3 fan is designed to get full supply voltage all the time, and to be controlled by a PWM signal. Using supply voltage to control the fan speed will work fine at first, but will burn out the fan motor over time, and eventually the fan will just stop. As for the RPM data, it is a bit tricky with a PS3 fan because there is no actual RPM data line available. It is possible to measure RPM by the small pulses on the ground line going to the fan, but no pre-made device is going to do that since you need to write the code for such a device for the specific fan being monitored. For my mods, the fan speed percentage displayed is just what my mod is sending to the fan...and is never read or adapted from RPMs.

So after reading your response I decided to preserve the functionality of my ps3's and for the sake of being able to provide my son a christmas present I intend to buy two of your fan mods. So this YLOD we are discussing will make a total of 3 ps3s....originally I was going to simply abandon my 3.5" fan controller mod but I had a couple ideas of how I can integrate it into the console. I am thinking of replacing the YLOD PS3's fan (post fix of course, and when money permits) with a PC fan of the same size, thus this fan mod will not strain the fan for it will not be a PWM fan.

So doing this will give me RPM and full control over the motherboard fan and an additional fan....but what really has my interest now is the possibilities made available by the open PWM connector on the Mobo. I wonder if I could build something like this http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-...Construction-/ and make it compatible with the PS3 such that the color of the LED will change in accordance to PS3 temperature (ex. Red high, Green medium, Blue low). I have seen this done before on other fan controllers such as the the new aquaro 5 or whatever the newest one is. Since the PS3 is sending the PWM signals in accordance with temperature, do you imagine this is feasible?

So the last question I have is whether I should use the PWM fan mod or PC fan mod for the YLOD ps3 or for my ps3's that never got YLOD. Do you imagine one would have a better performance in preventing YLOD or would they be relatively the same? Thanks

[KillerBug]

If you can find a PC fan that would fit (and which doesn't also have PWM control), that would probably work...but I am sure you have noticed that the PS3 blower isn't like any PC fan you have ever seen.

I like your LED idea; it would require a microcontroller in the middle but it would work, and it could probably be done with a very basic micro like an ATtiny25. It could also be added to something like my fat mod easily...although it would be less useful in that case since I already have the readings displayed in exact temperatures. Of course it would rely on accurate readings, so it probably wouldn't be much use on any system that had YLOD'd as the readings on those tend to be way off. It would also get thrown off by firmware updates as they tend to change the PWM to temperature relationship.

I strongly recommend fan mods in any PS3 with firmware 3.15 or higher even if no YLOD has happened...that is when they started making changes to the fan speeds by firmware, and it is also when we started to see the YLOD become a household term.