fan is too slow to cool the ps4

Adding pressure to a heatsink won't improve its cooling efficiency or capability, and in fact might cause more harm than good.

Your fan was working harder/faster before because the inside of your PS4 was so dirty. The dirt caused an airflow restriction, so removing the dirt would require less effort on the part of the fan.

How are you determining that it's an overheating problem? What temperature are you measuring and how are you measuring it?

When you added the washers to the heatsink (!!!), did you lift/wobble/otherwise break the connection between the heatsink and the processor, even a little? And if so, did you clean the heatsink and processor and apply new thermal compound before reassembling? If you separated the heatsink and processor, and/or if you didn't clean/reapply new compound, you likely have a thermal break between the processor and heatsink.

Hello I had a similar issue. My ps4 which was purchased in 2018 making it 4 years old at time of failure. Ps4 slim sae-003 mother board. Was full of dust fan was very loud. One day it just cut out while my son was playing just one beep and powered off. Couldn’t get it to power back up but no 3 beep warning for overheating. I cleaned the entire unit re-applied new thermal paste re-assembled with new power supply because the old one wasn’t showing 12v got the unit to turn on opened up a game and got about 10 mins in when it powered down unexpectedly again. Read online to flip it over as a test for broken solder balls and it stayed running for about 1 hour before powering down the same way again . Used thermal imager and found the ic ram chips were all around 168*F. But everything heated up evenly. I also noticed the fan only runs at low speed. Just wondering if I have a fan issue that’s causing it to power down or does it sound more like a solder ball failure. System was never dropped or anything like that but my son turn power save settings off so it ran constantly day and night for a few months.

What how would a 1 cm drop mess it up unless it was to concrete wtf

Heat accumulates as electricity passes through the various components of a computer: processors, drives, etc. Most computers will be designed with mechanisms for removing the heat so that it does not damage the components. Part of the thermal management design is monitoring component temperature and if it gets so high that damage may occur, a switch will shut down the computer/device.

Passive thermal management includes methods that utilize unassisted airflow through the device. Usually the device has openings in the base through which ambient temperature air is drawn. Because of this, it is essential to have adequate clearance between your computer’s base and the surface it sits on, or a perforated stand allowing for air movement, for air circulation sufficient for cooling.

As the air next to the components is heated by them, since hot air rises, it passes up through vents in the top of the device. This also sucks in air through the vents in the base. Another passive management method is to use a heat sink, usually a significant mass of metal, often molded with fins. The mass absorbs the heat from components by direct contact. Where the metal mass abuts the component, usually a processor, thermal paste can help bridge any gaps in the contact and facilitate heat transfer to the heat sink.

While heat sinks pull heat away from components, they also must have a way to get rid of that heat so it can continue to absorb it from the components to keep them from overheating. This is typically done by transfer of heat from the heat sink to the surrounding air; increased air circulation for significant cooling, is usually enhanced with fans. You can purchase additional fans and you can run the fans at a higher speed. You can also buy fan speed controllers and sometimes a simple software program to increase fan speeds.

There are also more complex (and more expensive) methods of cooling electrical components such as water-cooling and the use of piezo-electric devices. Less complex methods include lowering the ambient air temperature of the room you’re using, and elevating the computer inches off the surface it sits on and placing a small, portable fan behind the computer to facilitate airflow up through the base and through the computer. Another quick and easy fix for overheating is to go to your Power Saving Controls and set processor power consumption down from 100% to 60-80%; less electricity use means lower heat production.

I replaced the psu cleaned out heat sink and fan and pasted the CP/GPU with Grizzly thermal paste on mine and it fixed all overheating. Along with thermal pads. Runs like new. $80 later. This was for a PS4pro.

Sorry to necro this thread but i'll just add my 2 cents for what it's worth.

I bought a used PS4 and right away I noticed it was running sluggish and i got poor framerate ingame, textures was also slow to load. It was getting hot but at least not shutting down. My first thought was the heat might be normal since it's been a few years since i owned a PS4. I reckoned the hdd could be faulty

What i tried:

1. I re-initialized the PS4 thinking there is a lot of clutter on the hard drive from the previous owner but there was no improvement.
2. I installed a spare SSD that was laying around. It ran a little better, the menu was less laggy but in-game there was no difference.
3. Opened the PS4 halfway to clean it but didn't find a lot of dust. Cleaned the fan and heat sink anyway but no change.
4. Completely took it apart and cleaned what little dust was left and changed the thermal paste making sure the thermal pads that was on the memory stayed in place. (Some of you with heat issues after redoing thermal paste might have dislodged the memory thermal pads causing overheating and shut down). No change after new thermal paste but i left the top cover off and then I noticed the fan wasn't speeding up while gaming, it was just spinning slowly.
5. As a last ditch effort before calling the seller i took a old 1tb hdd that only had like 2 months run time on it and reinitialized the ps4 with it. Lo and behold the fan starting speeding up while gaming in reaction to the PS4 heating up and would slow down again as cooling happened.

So my assumption is that I had a faulty hdd to start with then put a faulty or incompatible SSD in which made no change. When i installed a healthy HDD everything was working normally. Steve from Tronicsfix on Youtube has mentioned in his videos that hard drives can cause some weird issues. I guess due to corrupt files.