Stain on motherboard?

[m0bius]

Hey folks. I'm new here so hopefully this is the correct forum for this.

I recently took apart my ps3 to try and figure out why it's not working anymore. One thing that caught my attention was a clear glue-like stain on the motherboard, and in more than one area. I have no clue about this type of stuff so I'm just wondering if my board is ruined because of whatever leaked onto it. I took some pictures but it may be difficult to see since the stain is clear. It looks more like a dried puddle of some liquid than a stain.

This is the entire motherboard, still resting inside the lower half of the ps3. You can see the fan underneath the board in the bottom left side of the pic. The CPU and heatsink are underneath the board in the upper half of this picture. There is nothing else besides those 3 things under the board.

This is the area of the board that is jutting out in the bottom right of the first picture. The stain is in the lower half of this picture, starting right below the glare. If you look at the lower left hand corner of the board you can see the edge of the stain. The stain gives the board a yellow-green color.

I have more pics of another area, but it's difficult to see the stain, which looks exactly like this one. Should I attempt to clean this off? Underneath the stain are all sorts of circuits so I think this may be the problem. Again, it's not really a stain within the board, but some dried liquid on top of the board.

I should also mention that when fully assembled, there is nothing on top of this area of the board. The board is sandwiched between two thin metal sheets, and once the top metal sheet is placed back on, and the bluray drive and power supply are placed on top of that, this is the only area of the board that is still exposed, so nothing could have leaked onto it from above.

Thanks for any help,
m0bius

 

[The_Lucas]

It probably ylodded. Read this guide on how to fix it: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17278444/YLOD_fix.pdf

 

[m0bius]

It probably ylodded. Read this guide on how to fix it: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17278444/YLOD_fix.pdf

Sorry I didn't mention it, but it does have the ylod. I took mine apart and already attempted the fix you posted, but it still didn't work after that. I didn't see any burn marks and there wasn't too much dust, but either the cpu or gpu was detached from the heatsink (not sure which is which).

I took another look at the board and realized there are 3 spots where this residue is. There's nothing on side of the board where these spots are, BUT there is something on the other side of board opposite each spot. One spot has the usb ports for the controllers underneath it, the other where the hard drive connects to the board, and the final spot has all of the ports on the back of the ps3 underneath it (hdmi/ethernet etc...). So basically there is some residue wherever a port connects to the board.

-m0bius

 

[Dngrsone]

There's not enough detail in the pictures for me to get a good look at it, but I'm thinking it may be just a thick layer of conformal coating, which is perfectly fine to have on your board.