Can you reflow a PS3 with a soldering iron instead of a heat gun?

[Cyber Akuma]

My cousin's PS3 crapped out on him......... again.

This time its just blinking red, I looked around and saw many fixes that involve just warming it up with a heat gun to reflow it. Thing is, he doesn't want to waste money on a heat gun just to use it once, that and he had a job soldering tons of microchips with miniature contact points on and off circuit boards before, so he has experience soldering.

Considering that the CPU/GPU's solder points are the problem 95% of the time, could he just melt each of the points with a soldering iron instead to reflow them? Or would that not work? Would melting the solder with a soldering iron be the same thing as reflowing?

[Rikua]

Actually my room mate just reflowed an xbox 360 and a PS3 tonight using a $20 Wagner HT-1000 and both were a complete success first try. Chances are that if its been reflowed once, after about 6-12 months, it may need reflowed again. It's well worth it imo. Also NO! DO NOT USE A SOLDERING IRON! It doesn't spread the heat evenly, also if you accidently bump one of the capacitors your cousins ps3 could be ruined.

[sel2killa]

the processor and graphics processor are bga's (ball grid arrays) and cannot be soldered by a soldering iron. it doesnt have pins surrounding the chip, rather it has tiny balls in an x vs y axis grid underneath the chip

[Cyber Akuma]

Good to know, thanks.

What about all these other things people are saying I should do as well? Like using flux (how can you use flux if you can't reach the solder points though? I read up on what a BGA is), or pre-baking it or something to avoid moisture that can cause popcorning, or using heat spreaders? The guy seemed to be all over the place, but I don't want us to risk breaking it if we need to do any of these beyond using a heat gun.

[gotcha]

Yeah and you will be wasting your time doing a reflow unless you have a station that applies the correct amount of heat over the motherboard properly while the board is clamped down inside a bracket to prevent it from warping. It is a tedious process to say the least and I would not recommend a reflow to anyone that planed on playing their console for a long time. Now with that said a heat gun will absolutely not get lead free solder hot enough to melt it but what you are actually doing is heating up the motherboard and causing it to warp which in return in some cases forces the cracks in the crappy lead free solder to touch each other for a while allowing the console to work temporarily. This is the main reason reflows are not a permanent fix and do more harm than good. If you want your console fixed properly then find a professional on ebay maybe or wherever you can and have them reball your console before your ruin it with a heat gun. Reballing a console will make it last for a long long time because the crappy lead free solder is being replaced with leaded solder that is much more pliable.

[sel2killa]

liquid flux will get underneath a bga - it's viscous enough. they even make liquid flux specifically for lead-free solder. and yes, a heatgun WILL get hot enough to melt the solder - a hot-air rework station is essentially a heatgun without the board support and directed nozzle (which is probably the biggest difference between a a home-jobber heat gun and actual hot-air rework station). bga's are better reflowed using infrared rework stations though, especially since there's a heat spreader on the ps3's bga's....