said by C0deZer0:So anyway, here's my report on what I did, after reading
this thread on gamespot. Following the
disassembly tutorial on here, I noticed a couple of differences for the 60gig model I have vs. the 20gig they used for the tutorial. First off was the additional removal of the card reader drives, and secondly was the wireless antenna at the back that is connected to the front piece of PCB with a wire.
Other than that, the dis-assembly went through easily enough. For the 'warranty' sticker i used Elmer's Sticky out to soften it up enough to cleanly come off. And before you say "well, ya ruined it now", keep in mind this is an original 60gig model that I received from Sony after the last one had a GPU failure. This thing was already past any possible warranty I might have had from Sony, and it was either do this or spend another $150 and run the risk of getting a neutered unit back, already updated with the Linux-removed firmware.
So, got that done, put it together... the top cover(s) were easily the hardest part. Still ended up with a spare screw that didn't have a spot to go in, even after accounting for every possible screw hole in the system.

Put it together finally, switched it on... so far so good. Started up Twisted Metal 2, as that was one of the games I'd noticed that it would spin up the fan rather loudly, rather quickly. According to the other thread, AS5 would need up to two full weeks to properly cure and give the ideal performance for these chips. Even so, I noticed some improvement already. The fan spun up much later, and spun down rather quckly after exiting the game, which already suggests the AS5 is doing its job. 'Cooking' it now by running the F@H client, and even then it's running quieter on that too.
Have to say, I'm rather impressed with the initial results.
That's actually to much paste you used on your bottom picture. You want about a grain of rice that's uncooked. You don't need much at all.