Can't seem to tell if PS3 fan is working.

[dragongit]

First and foremost, I'm going to state I have a 60GB fatman PS3, not the launch models but fairly close to it.Ok, I had gotten L.A. Noire yesterday and I'm always parinoid that my system is going to overheat and die from it cause of the rumors, So far its ok. Though I had noticed that even while playing, I don't hear the fan, and as far as I can tell all I can feel from either side is heat, no air. The only sound I think I hear is the disk spinning. I've tried to use the "hold eject button while turning it on" test but nothing happened, now I'm afraid my fan is dead, and my system is now at risk of overheating. Is there a secondary test I could try out to make sure its still working? Its been 4 years since I've had this thing, so I'm sure its warrenty is long since expired.

I don't want to deal with Sony, paying god knows how much to have it "repaired" and having it sent away for weeks, nor do I want to go out and spend cash I can't afford to spend right now buying a brand new system. The game was my budget for the month. Can anyone give me advice on what to do, if I can somehow still fix this, or if its just awaiting death now.

 

[Snork Maiden]

First thing I'd do is ring Sony and check your console is out of warranty, or check that they won't look at it for free. Sony knows best, and if you are out of warranty then ringing doesn't mean you *have* to send it out, so you aren't losing anything.

Second - opening up my 360 was a piece of cake if you have the right set of screwdrivers, and it's certainly possible that taking a PS3 apart is just as simple. If you can do that then you can actually take a look to see if the fans are spinning or not, which is much better than trying to listen for them. I can't give advice how to open a PS3, but if it's possible a Google search should throw up a bunch of results.

I'll give a disclaimer for this last bit of advice - I'm no tech guru, and this is personal experience. If I take the fan out of my Xbox it overheats, but it shuts down before any kind of serious damage can be done (infact if the heatsinks are out it shuts down in seconds). Sticking the fan back in later fixes the problem - lasting damage should be difficult to do since as soon as the system even *thinks* it might be overheating it stops everything. If you're out of warranty anyway then you could continue using the thing until you start getting "proper" errors - if it comes to that your situation hasn't changed (fix it yourself or pay sony) and if it doesn't then you're laughing. Again, bear in mind I'm no expert here and this is personal experience, but this is the avenue I'd probably try myself.

 

[dmase]

Throw in another game after giving your ps3 sufficient time to rest and get cool then measure how long it takes for the fan to kick in. Repeat with LA noire, it should freeze before it causes damage from what i've heard but thats not a definite.

The fan for the fat version is relatively noticeable but shouldn't kick in for awhile the thing is supposed to play for hours uninterrupted but given LA's predicament don't test it that much.(over 6 hours at once for starters)

Ummm I also think the fan should kick in more regularly during cutscenes then anything else but that could be wrong.