I have had my PS3 60GB (with a 320GB disk) exactly 3 years this Christmas just gone, and have used it pretty much every day, i have also taken yer good care of it in the way of cleaning. I regularly use the vacuum cleaner to remove any dust, instead of using a cloth which may push dust further into the unit.
Having said that i was surprised that on 11th Jan 2010 while the kids were watching a DVD the unit just powered off with a blinking RED power LED. I immediately thought it may have overheated, which shouldn't really happen while watching a dvd as it isn't really running that hard.
I left the unit for a few minutes then tried to re-start it... 3 beeps, YLOD, flashing Red LED. I then unplugged all of the cables, powered it off at the mains, then tried to power up again... the same, 3 beeps, YLOD, flashing Red LED. Each time i try to start it i can hear the cooling fan spin up, so the fan is not at fault.
I decided to leave it over night, i case it needed time to cool further, tweeted a bit about my problem and looked forward to a eureka moment in the morning
... ouch, powered on, 3 beeps, YLOD, flashing Red LED, grrrrrrr it cant still be hot (if that was why it shut down), so i powered it all off, removed the hard disk, and tried powering the unit back on, still the same. Now obviously my unit is no longer under warranty so the next thing to do is to strip it, and see if it may have overheated due to dust.
Considering i have never taken a ps3 apart before i must say it was quite easy, it took about 15 mins to get it completely in bits (so don't believe mod chippers when they say it takes 2 hours!!!), i was surprised at the ammount of dust that was inside, as in there was very little really, there was a slight coating on the fan blades, and some small accumilations inside the head sink fins, nothing major at all. Even so, i took out the dyson and brushed over gently with the brush attachment to remove.
I then re-assembled the unit which took about 10 minutes, plugged it in and, yes, result, it still didn't work , so now i may try and reflow the CPU and GPU, but in the mean time im just going to buy a new unit, we have come to rely on play tv, a little too much!
so i got my new PS3 Slim 250GB home and wire it up, configured settings, yadda yadda... realised that i would ahve to download all my stuff again from playstation network... went to films, hu? can't download them again, WTF???
...The next thing is plugging in the PlayTV box, erm what's going on no power LED, no install? tried unplugging, reinstalling, no avail, start PlayTV and just get a message saying that it didn't install properly.
So it looks as though either the PlayTV box died and killed my PS3 60GB or the PS3 died and killed the PlayTV box, either way, both are out of warranty, and now i have to fork out for a new play tv box... they souldn't have both died at the same time so one must have killed the other, my best guess is that the play tv box effed up and drove the ps3 nuts, causing it to overheat, or the play tv effed up and killed the usb on the PS3 ???? SUCKS