Why does my PS3 turn off after the lights flash?

"Well Sir, lucky for you, all is not lost. You are suffering from what is commonly called the ""Yellow Light of Death"", or YLoD. This is most commonly caused by overheating of the processor, causing the solder joints to break, essentially ""cutting the brain from the body"" of the PlayStation 3. But, it could be something else. If the power supply is faulty, you will also get this same error.

To tell if it is the motherboard or powersupply that is at fault, turn the console on, and listen carefully. If the fan starts to spin up for a second or two, and then the console ""Yellow Lights"", then you have a motherboard failure (it takes a second for the console to realized that it is broken). If the fans don't even start up, but as soon as you push the button the console yellow lights, you likely have a power supply issue.

Also lucky for you, iFixit has solutions to both of these issues. We offer a Yellow Light of Death Fix Kit and a repair guide, which contains all of the necessary tools and information to repair the Yellow Light of Death. However, be warned, this is not a guaranteed fix. Some folks say that they had to repair their PlayStations several times, while others say that they only had to once. It can depend on the damage done to the console, as well as the time spent re-flowing the motherboard.

We also offer replacement power supplies, and guides for installing the power supply."

I would suggest you open up the ps3 and clean it out, as well as put new thermal paste on. This was helpful for me http://vkrepair.com/ps3-flashing-red-lig...

Your PS3 is suffering from the YLOD (Yellow Light of Death) It signifies hardware failure, and can be caused by a number of problems. What happened prior to this? For more info about the problem, look at the answers to this question.

i repaired my console and it worked but only for 45 mins then ylod again i used arctic silver thermal paste as it states it better than ceramic. now after reopening my console a suprise was waiting not what i was thinking. i could see where i had spread the thermal paste on it and in some places it had connected and in others not even touching. i will definately be doing it again with 1 thing in mind........ make sure the thermal paste is thick enough to be joining both surfaces. which confuses me as one guide said a grain of rice of thermal paste another said a pea sized amount and im thinking an after 8 could fit in the gap. about 1.2gram on each which is about a third on each should do it if not im selling it for parts

Yea sounds like yellow light of death... give this a shot.

Well what u have here is called the yellow light of death or also called (YLOD). Here is a couple ways to tell if it is a power failure or the motherboard malfunction. If you listen carefully well you turn on the system if you hear the fans turn on then the system turns of after a couple seconds that is a motherboard malfunction the system will realize that the system is broken. But if you turn the system on and the fans do not spin and turn on then you have a power failure. That could happen when your power cord/the AU 3 pin power cable gets damaged. Another way a power failure could happen is when the power from the power cable can't pass through the system and reach the main power circuit. But you got lucky there is a way you could fix this. You could get the PS3 repair kit or you could bring it to Gamestop or a system repair place and they will take a look at it.