Hark Tech offers UK mail-in repair for overheating game consoles — PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. We fix loud fans, mid-game shutdowns and thermal throttling with a full strip-down, ultrasonic clean and fresh high-grade thermal paste. Typical cost £55–£90, free initial diagnosis, no-fix-no-fee, 90-day warranty, 3–7 working day turnaround.
UK mail-in repair for overheating PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Symptoms include loud fan noise, mid-game shutdowns, thermal throttling, slow performance after warm-up and the case being hot to the touch. We strip the console, ultrasonic-clean the heatsink and fans, evacuate dust, replace the dried factory thermal paste with high-grade compound or a PTM7950 phase-change pad, and bench-test under sustained game load. Typical cost £55–£90, free diagnosis, 90-day warranty. 3–7 working day turnaround from arrival.
| Service | Console Overheating Repair |
|---|---|
| Covers | PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5, Xbox One (S/X), Xbox Series X/S |
| Coverage | United Kingdom (mail-in) |
| Location | Basingstoke, Hampshire, United Kingdom |
| Price | £55–£90 |
| Turnaround | 3–7 working days from arrival |
| Diagnosis | Free, no-fix-no-fee |
| Warranty | 90 days on the work |
| Data retained | Yes — storage is never touched |
The fan ramping to full RPM during normal gameplay (or even at the dashboard) is the classic dust + dried-paste signature. The chip is too hot, the fan is compensating, and you hear it across the room.
Console powers off with no warning after 20–60 minutes of play, often during graphically heavy scenes. That’s thermal protection cutting in to save the APU. Almost always fixable with a clean and repaste.
Frame rate drops, stuttering or input lag that gets worse the longer the console runs. The CPU/GPU is downclocking itself to stay below the thermal limit.
The exhaust feels noticeably hot or the top of the console is too warm to keep your hand on. Healthy consoles run warm, not hot. Hot is the failure mode.
Game crashes back to the system menu, often with a generic error code. If it’s repeatable in the same demanding scene and the console is hot at the time, it’s thermal — not the game.
Console refuses to power on for a few minutes after a long session, then works again once it cools down. The thermal protect circuit is locking out the boot.
Typical cost is £55–£90, depending on the console and whether the fan also needs replacement:
You get a firm written quote after free initial diagnosis. No-fix-no-fee — you only pay for work that’s actually done.
Two reasons: thermal paste dries out and dust accumulates. Factory thermal paste is fine for a couple of years, then it pumps out and hardens — so heat can’t transfer from the APU to the heatsink. At the same time, dust mats up inside the fan and heatsink fins. The fan compensates by spinning faster (loud), then the chip throttles, then the console shuts itself off as a safety. A strip-clean and repaste resets it to factory or better.
If your console is still under Sony or Microsoft’s manufacturer warranty (1–2 years from purchase), opening the case voids it — we’d recommend pursuing the warranty claim first. For consoles outside warranty (most PS4s and Xbox Ones, and PS5/Series X consoles bought 2+ years ago) there’s nothing to void.
Both, depending on the console. PS5 ships from Sony with liquid metal (Galinstan) on the APU — we restore that with fresh liquid metal and proper insulation. PS4, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S use thermal paste from the factory; we use Honeywell PTM7950 phase-change pad (preferred) or premium paste like Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut / Arctic MX-6. PTM7950 doesn’t pump out, so it lasts much longer than factory paste.
With PTM7950 phase-change pad and a clean console, you can reasonably expect 5+ years before another repaste is needed — it’s used in industrial and laptop applications precisely because it doesn’t pump out. With premium paste expect 3–4 years. Either way, longer than the factory job.
We test the fan during diagnosis. If the bearing is grinding or the fan is noisy at low RPM (not just at full tilt), we quote a fan replacement on top — typically £25–£45 for the part on most consoles. Most of the time, though, what sounds like a fan failure is just dust packed into the heatsink fins.
If the shutdowns happen after 20–60 minutes of gameplay and the console is hot to the touch, yes — it’s almost always thermal protection cutting in. If shutdowns are instant on power-on, that’s a different fault (usually power supply or main-board) and we’d handle it under our power-fault repair instead. Free diagnosis tells you which it is.
Free diagnosis, no-fix-no-fee, 90-day warranty. Serving the UK by post from Basingstoke.
Hark Tech