[PS3] Playstation 3 Fan Noise. Actually concerns RPM this time.

I wanted to run a quick poll on PS3 owners about the PS3 fan noise they are experiencing. I figured a new thread would be better for this rather than clogging up the main PS3 thread.

Anyway as most know the PS3 has three fan stages. Stage 1, the unit is basically silent, stage 2 is relatively quite and stage 3 rivals the Xbox 360 in noise.

I'm looking for some honest first hand experience with how your PS3s behave with these stages along with some general information as some people claim the PS3 is silent running while in my experience it is only silent running for the first 20-30 minutes in a complete open air environment in luke-warm ambient temperature.

So how many people hear their PS3s hit stage 3 on a regular basis and how long does it usually take? I'm also interested if people can actually leave their PS3 folding or such overnight and never hear the unit ramp up to stage 3. I've heard some claims that some machines won't even ramp up to stage 2 when folding so if anyone can do this, please post.

Second if you answer just toss down what SKU you have.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Vacuuming electronic equipment is pretty much the worst idea ever as you are just asking for a static discharge.


Anyway thanks for the few replies. If you were curious as why I asked this, we ran into the possibility of a bug in the PS3 with the digital CPU thermometer. We were actually able to get a few various PS3 models to run some tests and it turns out there is indeed a bug in late model 60GB PS3s and very early model 40GB PS3s(none of these may have made it to the US even). Seems there was a batch of PS3s that have 'faulty' digital thermometers and its reading the CPU temperature at exactly +8 degrees and its constant across all of these models. This is causing these units to ramp up the fan speed too early.

Without going into too much detail this is probably something fixable though a firmware upgrade as the manufacturing ID is available to OS. Word has been sent to Sony but who knows if they will actually follow up on it. They may already know about it because if you call them up and complain about the fan noise, they'll set you up with a warranty return with no questions asked.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

The unit doesn't need to be on or even plugged in to suffer from ESD. This is just a friendly warning. Electronic equipment + vacuums = BAD. You're much better off going at it with a can of compressed air.

And yes I'm aware of ESD save vacuums but unless someone is in the PC/Copy machine repair business I doubt they have one laying around.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Just to let you know, the issue associated with some PS3 models ramping up the fan too early was fixed with the latest firmware. Enjoy your quieter running PS3s, some of you.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?