Hardware Lifespan of a PS3 Slim?

[Gorkensnorkel]

Last year I purchased a new PS3 Slim (2500a I believe) that came with the Move Bundle because I need a bluray player. I modded it as a "side project" out of boredom because I had a library of old games laying around and figured it would be cool to have them all installed on an internal drive. In all honesty I am more of a collector than a hardcore gamer these days and run the machine about 50-100 hours per year (mostly blurays). Like with classic cars I prefer to keep it in mint condition if possible, so that leads me to ask/wonder... What is the lifespan of these machines? I know its all very relative, relative to the room temperature and conditions, how clean it is kept, and so on and people are saying they should last about 5+ years (in general).

But 5 years under what conditions? Like I said above, I keep it clean and play it less than 100 hours per year on average so... What would the lifespan of a PS3 Slim be if it is only played say, 100-200 hours per year? I know a lot of people/kids run these machines in the ground playing them none stop for years but is it safe to say that it will mos likely never have any severe technical issues if its used only "lightly"?

I know they say to change the thermal paste but the unit is (even though its a 2011 model) new and barely out of the box. Not to mention I am not to savvy about opening it up and risking damaging it when there is no real problem (yet).

I would just like to hear what some other people might have to say about this, any insight is greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[Armadillo]

I have a launch 120GB slim (so late 09) and it's still going strong. Used heavily and only thing I've ever done is dust it. As long as you don't mistreat them, the slims seem pretty reliable.

 

[Gorkensnorkel]

That's good to hear! I am hoping it will last until there is a good working emulator for PS3 games, that way I have it around to move my library over to PC.

 

[Deleted member 333767]

I've got a CECH-2k and they appear to be the most reliable model from what I've read on the internet.

I purchased mine second hand from eBay, and I've owned it for 4 years, god knows how long the previous owner used it for prior to selling.

I've got CFW and used webMAN since it was first released to increase it's fan speed to keep it nice and cool.

I also only use it in air conditioned environments since I'm located right at the top of Australia almost at the equator, it's computer/console killing weather up here!

Never ever had a problem with my PS3, although in it's old age, she's beginning to boot up really slowly and get laggy in the XMB. But games still play perfectly.

10/10 would recommend 2k model.

 

[cybrian]

I've got CFW and used webMAN since it was first released to increase it's fan speed to keep it nice and cool.

This is a very good thing to do, but be very careful not to override the fan speed to run too slow.

I have a PS3 Slim with CFW and webMAN, and without reading the options carefully enough I accidentally set the fan speed for PS2 games to something like 15-20%, which caused the system to overheat and shut off within minutes of starting a PS2 game. It didn't cause me any lasting damage, but manually controlling fan speeds does come with some risk of setting them too slow, and causing a constant or repeating overheat will decrease the system's lifespan.