Chosen Solution

Noise ramps up to max fan speed within 5-10 minutes. Regardless of external temperature. Had the PS3 opened by a professional, dust cleaned, new thermal paste, same problem. Suggestions on how to fix? Problem with heat pipes on heat sink?

  1. Your PS3 may have a faulty temperature sensor making it unable to detect the heat of your PS3 and it’s default is to set fan speeds to max incase of overheating.
  2. Your PS3 may have a faulty fan due to previous dust or heat. A replacement may work.
  3. If it’s an older PS3 the CPU heats up more for newer games, the newer games use more CPU power causing it to heat up faster and the fan to speed up to prevent overheating.

I had this problem after I repaired the PS3 because the YLoD. I opened up the 3 again and noticed that the thermal paste was not making complete contact with the heatsinks even though they were screwed down tightly. I decided to apply another layer of paste to both heatsinks and this seems to have quieted the fan down. You could try that