Used to swear by thermal paste spread patterns until I saw a PS3 that was outliving three others

I had this buddy in Phoenix who runs a small repair shop out of his garage. He showed me three PS3s from the same batch, all with YLOD. Two had the typical spread pattern I always did. The third one he did a tiny dot in the center and let the heatsink clamp it down. That one is still running two years later. The other two died again within 6 months. I don't know if it was the paste or just luck but I switched to the dot method after that. Anyone else had a specific technique that just worked way better for one console?

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ryanburns1mo ago

The dot method usually works fine, but it wasn't the paste that saved that PS3.