PS4 Blue Light of Death Fix

by Steve Porter September 15, 2016

PS4 Blue Light of Death Fix

-Let's talk about the PS4 and it's infamous blue light of death and the blue light of death fix. First of all there seems to be much confusion as to what the BLOD actually is and what will actually fix it. I've watched and read probably 15-20 different blogs, websites and videos that claim to know the fix for this problem. The vast majority have no clue what the causes or the fixes for this problem are.

What the blue light of death isn't

Let's dispel some myths first:

If your PS4 turns on and the light turns white you do not have the blue light of death
If you ever get a picture on the screen then you don't have it either
The BLOD is not caused by a bad HDMI port
It is not caused by a hard drive problem
It is also not caused by any sort of system software or update problem
It is not even caused by the moon, stars and planets being out of alignment (although I might have read something about that somewhere)!

What it is

The "blue light of death" or "blinking blue light" or "pulsing blue light" is when you turn on your PS4 and the blue light turns on and blinks...actually it kind of pulses. There is not display on the TV (some TV's will just say "no signal" and it never goes to the white light. If you try to hold the power button long enough to get into safe mode it either won't do anything or it turns back off. You can't get to any menu or safe mode or anything like that because it won't let you get that far. This is the BLOD. There are many other problems people have with these game consoles but this describes what most people recognize as the blinking blue light or pulsing blue light.

How to fix the blue light of death

The main problem that causes the blinking blue light is the solder joints under the main chip (the APU) seem to get a bad connection. The main problem we've found with the APU is that some of the solder pads become oxidized and cause a bad connection. This also means that a simple "reflow" will usually do nothing to get your console working again.
This probably sounds familiar to anyone who knows much about the Xbox 360. This console had a similar problem.

You might be thinking that this would be an easy fix since you can just heat it up with a heat gun. The problem is that most of the time a heat gun is just not a reliable way to fix these. The only good way to heat these is to use a professional rework machine that is made for this type of work.

That all being said there is a fix that will sometimes work to get your PS4 working again. This fix will fix both the PS4 blue light of death and when the console turns on then right back off. Here is a video that explains the repair: