Last week when God of War came out, I got home from work that day, eagerly opened the game up, slid the disc into the PS4.....and then my disc drive made some funny noises, and I got this message
UNRECOGNIZED DISC
....What..... Ejected the disc, did a hard reboot of the PS4, popped the disc back in. Weird noises.
UNRECOGNIZED DISC
Oh come on!! Took the disc out again, grabbed another game, tried to put that in. Weird noises.
UNRECOGNIZED DISC
Fuck! Started doing some reading. Found that at times, when the firmware updates, its possible for it not to sync w/ the disc drive, so all you have to do is boot the PS4 into safe mode, redownload the latest firmeware, let it reinstall, bobs your uncle, you're gaming again. So I thought sweet! Lets do this. Went thru everything, got back to the main screen, popped God of War back in. Soooon I thought. Weird noises.
UNRECOGNIZED DISC
Well shit.......this means its a hardware issue. So I did some more reading, saw that people said that if you normally have your PS4 horizontal, to put it vertical, and visa versa. So I set my PS4 up vertical, popped the disc in once again and........success!! This however is not a fix. The drive was clearly bad, so I was going to have to replace it. (Side note: This is such a Sony thing. Even back to the OG PS1, mine got to the point where it would only work if it was upside down
I guess some things never change.)
So I did some more research and this is when I learned that PS4 pro disc drives are not easy to come by. And they're actually slightly different than the drives that are in the normal PS4's. Those use a daughter board that's attached to the drive to "pair" it w/ the motherboard so its recognized. The PS3 drives had this as well. I know because I've replaced the drive on my PS3 also The drives in the PS4 Pro's do NOT. The only complete PS4 Pro drives I could find for sale were like $130, and they're pulled from USED PS4's, not even brand new. Then I found just the laser assembly thats INSIDE the drive, and that was $30 and brand new. Yup, we're goin w/ that one and hoping it fixes the problem.
SO, I purchased the laser assembly, a $16 electronics tool kit from amazon, and was ready to go.
Now for the unfortunate part. To get the disc drive out of this system, you literally have to disassemble the ENTIRE console. I used this guide as my bible for the whole process. It was a tremendous help.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/PlayStation+4+Pro+Optical+Drive+Replacement/88799
Welp. Here we go.
Metal tray off, bottom of the motherboard exposed
Power supply removed
Motherboard out. Warranty most certainly voided.
The heart of the system.
The heatsink
And finally the drive is out. The ONLY thing left in the shell is just the fan.
And disc drive disassembled. Unfortunately that guide stops short of dismantling the actual disc drive, but its pretty easy to figure out.
The offending unit finally exposed.
I take a second to survey the destruction.
Here's my cheat sheet. I gridded off a couple sheets of paper, and for every step in the guide where you're removing screws, i wrote that step on the paper and placed the screws there. That way when reassembling I could go back to each step and know exactly what screws go to what part.
Got the new laser assembly in, and reassembled everything working backwards thru the guide. Hooked it all back up, turned it on. It turned on. Doing good so far!! Slid the disc in....... No weird noises... tried to start the game.... and.....
Success!!!! Had no problems reading the disc.
HOWEVER... As soon as I got into the game, my fan started to spin up. And it got louder....and louder...and louder...mind you im not even doing anything in the game yet. It got to the point where it was on MAX. Spinning faster and louder than anything Ive ever heard. This is not normal.
I had cleaned all the gunky factory thermal paste from the processor and heat sink when I had it apart and reapplied some new stuff, and I didn't put a ton on but it had decent coverage. Definitely put less on than I scraped off because I know youre not SUPPOSED to use a ton. So I thought well where was so much on from the factory maybe it just needs more. So I opened it BACK up, cleaned off what i just put on, and reapplied some more, being generous this time. Screwed everything back down, made sure everything was tight, even bent up the arms of the bracket that holds the processor down a little bit so it would put a little more pressure against the heat sink. Hooked everything back up again, started game again.....was fine for a few minutes, but then once again, fan went to MAX. Played the game for about 10 minutes to see if it would let up. Nope. So I dumped back out to the PS4 dashboard, and let it sit there for 10 minutes with nothing happened to see if the fan would let up. Nope, even there it was still maxxed.
Soooooo, I don't know now. Maybe open it back up again and try LESS thermal paste? I know on computer cpu's you're just supposed to use the thinnest layer you can, but the factory stuff was just glopped on there and it never had to run the fan like this.
But.....at least it reads discs now?
UNRECOGNIZED DISC
....What..... Ejected the disc, did a hard reboot of the PS4, popped the disc back in. Weird noises.
UNRECOGNIZED DISC
Oh come on!! Took the disc out again, grabbed another game, tried to put that in. Weird noises.
UNRECOGNIZED DISC
Fuck! Started doing some reading. Found that at times, when the firmware updates, its possible for it not to sync w/ the disc drive, so all you have to do is boot the PS4 into safe mode, redownload the latest firmeware, let it reinstall, bobs your uncle, you're gaming again. So I thought sweet! Lets do this. Went thru everything, got back to the main screen, popped God of War back in. Soooon I thought. Weird noises.
UNRECOGNIZED DISC
Well shit.......this means its a hardware issue. So I did some more reading, saw that people said that if you normally have your PS4 horizontal, to put it vertical, and visa versa. So I set my PS4 up vertical, popped the disc in once again and........success!! This however is not a fix. The drive was clearly bad, so I was going to have to replace it. (Side note: This is such a Sony thing. Even back to the OG PS1, mine got to the point where it would only work if it was upside down
I guess some things never change.)So I did some more research and this is when I learned that PS4 pro disc drives are not easy to come by. And they're actually slightly different than the drives that are in the normal PS4's. Those use a daughter board that's attached to the drive to "pair" it w/ the motherboard so its recognized. The PS3 drives had this as well. I know because I've replaced the drive on my PS3 also
The drives in the PS4 Pro's do NOT. The only complete PS4 Pro drives I could find for sale were like $130, and they're pulled from USED PS4's, not even brand new. Then I found just the laser assembly thats INSIDE the drive, and that was $30 and brand new. Yup, we're goin w/ that one and hoping it fixes the problem. SO, I purchased the laser assembly, a $16 electronics tool kit from amazon, and was ready to go.
Now for the unfortunate part. To get the disc drive out of this system, you literally have to disassemble the ENTIRE console. I used this guide as my bible for the whole process. It was a tremendous help.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/PlayStation+4+Pro+Optical+Drive+Replacement/88799
Welp. Here we go.
Metal tray off, bottom of the motherboard exposed
Power supply removed
Motherboard out. Warranty most certainly voided.
The heart of the system.
The heatsink
And finally the drive is out. The ONLY thing left in the shell is just the fan.
And disc drive disassembled. Unfortunately that guide stops short of dismantling the actual disc drive, but its pretty easy to figure out.
The offending unit finally exposed.
I take a second to survey the destruction.
Here's my cheat sheet. I gridded off a couple sheets of paper, and for every step in the guide where you're removing screws, i wrote that step on the paper and placed the screws there. That way when reassembling I could go back to each step and know exactly what screws go to what part.
Got the new laser assembly in, and reassembled everything working backwards thru the guide. Hooked it all back up, turned it on. It turned on. Doing good so far!! Slid the disc in....... No weird noises... tried to start the game.... and.....
Success!!!! Had no problems reading the disc.
HOWEVER... As soon as I got into the game, my fan started to spin up. And it got louder....and louder...and louder...mind you im not even doing anything in the game yet. It got to the point where it was on MAX. Spinning faster and louder than anything Ive ever heard. This is not normal.
I had cleaned all the gunky factory thermal paste from the processor and heat sink when I had it apart and reapplied some new stuff, and I didn't put a ton on but it had decent coverage. Definitely put less on than I scraped off because I know youre not SUPPOSED to use a ton. So I thought well where was so much on from the factory maybe it just needs more. So I opened it BACK up, cleaned off what i just put on, and reapplied some more, being generous this time. Screwed everything back down, made sure everything was tight, even bent up the arms of the bracket that holds the processor down a little bit so it would put a little more pressure against the heat sink. Hooked everything back up again, started game again.....was fine for a few minutes, but then once again, fan went to MAX. Played the game for about 10 minutes to see if it would let up. Nope. So I dumped back out to the PS4 dashboard, and let it sit there for 10 minutes with nothing happened to see if the fan would let up. Nope, even there it was still maxxed.
Soooooo, I don't know now. Maybe open it back up again and try LESS thermal paste? I know on computer cpu's you're just supposed to use the thinnest layer you can, but the factory stuff was just glopped on there and it never had to run the fan like this.
But.....at least it reads discs now?
