Originally Posted by John Davison:

I keep my PS3 and my Xbox 360 in an entertainment unit in the living room. It's a big wooden thing with glass doors, and while it looks cool, I guess it's not exactly what I'd cool well ventilated.

Anyway, this morning at some ungodly hour, both my kids got up and wanted to play videogames. My older son wanted to play Cars while my little guy wanted to watch, and fiddle with another controller while pretending to play. The pretend option turned out to be the Sixaxis (this is relevant, I'll come back to it.)

Now, the 360 on it's own doesn't run so hot that it can't handle being in the entertainment unit with the door shut. I've had it on for hours and hours and hours before, and it never gets so hot that the fan goes into turbo bastard mode. The PS3, on the other hand, is another story. If I keep that sucker in a confined space for too long, I fear for the safety of my family. Hence, whenever we play PS3 games...the door to the unit stays open.

So (back to the narrative) while pretending to play along with his brother, my little guy hits the PS button, and the PS3 springs to life, inside the closed entertainment unit, unbeknown to Mrs. D and myself.

Needless to say, temperatures rise, fans kick in, then more fans kick in, then some new, untold level of nuclear reactor-grade cooling kicks in deep within the bowels of the PS3, and the first thing I know of this is when a little voice cries, "Dad, something's wrong with my game."

Conditions in the confined space had become so super-heated that the 360 red-ringed out, big time.

So. Bottom line, my PS3 killed my 360. I have learned a very valuable lesson from this.

Quote:
Someone @ MuroBBS did quite a stunt to test out PS3's fans (he's one of those who have the loud ones)
He found at least 8 different "levels" on the fan, here's a translation of the levels:

- Fan off
- Fan on, but really silent "hummming"
- Fan's "normal level" after 10mins of idling, movie freaks would say "no-no" for this
*Covers the PS3 inside a towel*
- It's loud
- It's REALLY loud
- Gets even louder
- Hellish noise
- "OMFG-level"
- "Beyond OMFG-level" - if I heard a person yelling like this, I'd call straight to the morgue instead of 112 (112 is the finnish 911)

The "levels" are audible steps on the fan speed, and the PS3 did survive the towel test, it stepped down 4 levels within a minute after removing the towel.

My dbox is so worthless. Full of rdm, sam gear, boltheads, and bolt quivers.