the new slim 160gb wouldnt get ylod that easily.

Hmmm... I just give some comment..

I notice YLOD is a symptom of few incident

1. The processor / mainboard overheat and causes the solder to detached it self and hence cause malfunction to PS3

Preventive solution
I have a notebook (Compaq V3000) and it suffers very close to the same stuff (get hot and solder melt) how I prevent this... I open up my notebook every year and perform heatsink and fan cleaning and it is now 5 years and my notebook just run cool and like new...

My solution for PS3 (Fat or SLIM) if you dare or after warranty you can actually open up the PS3 unit and clean the heatsink and Fan, years of dust will degrade the performance of cooling and the efficiency of airflow inside the unit and with this result it will get HOT and solder inside will melt... (it is logic....)

If it is under warranty by Sony try send the unit in for a annual dust removal just tell sony my unit get very warm and will like you to service the internal fan. (under warranty most sony will give free service)

like this your internal cooling system will run at tip top condition and this will prevent system overheat leading to YLOD...

2. YLOD is caused by the voltage converter or Inverter...

Solution.
Dirty current by TNB we all know and we all pretend dont know hahaha
our TNB current fluctuate and if you have air conditioning at home you will notice your light flicker once the compressor fire up...

my solution to prevent this I use UPS (yes Power Ups Backup) I hook my PS3 and my HTPC into it... it provide stable current, clean current and during blackout you can shut down your PC and PS3 properly to prevent HDD crash (Data loss)

3. YLOD caused by Bluray drive failure / or Bluray Drive Failure

Solution.
None basically..... replace your bluray lah if it fail...
some suggest not to leave your Bluray in the tray... but I think this is OK

I dont recomend you to watch pirated bluray @ PS3 reason being some cheapo bluray is not balance and cause vibration... this will spoiled your unit... expecially when you notice the bluray disc has a very thick and un even printing.... very bad.

Let's cook it over time! I've been left my PS3 (fat 80GB, upgraded to 500GB of HDD) and it's been running over 18 hours and will continue to cook it until it's time to serve the dish.

Expected to run 27 hours continuously until tonight. Hope I won't bring any harm to my PS3 system which is of 2 years++ (near to 3 years) if I'm not mistaken.

I had to kill that PS3...in a day or two that is. It's not in an air conditioned room. I've switched on the ceiling fan on 2 out of 5 speed of fan. I'm not sure if that helps for cooling purpose. I switched off the LCD TV and the only thing running is my PS3 doing some downloading stuff.

I slept at 3am and I was awake at 6am, the PS3 fan is still silent. I woke up at about 7.58am and the machine is still running. The fan didn't kick up its speed, still silently doing the downloading quietly. I'm not sure how it turns out when I reach home later today. I'll report on the fan noise tomorrow.

Maybe I'll snap some pictures or maybe a video with my camera.

Erm my fat ps3 cechk06 got rlod whn playing some game especially gta4.
So I decided to open it and put the arctic silver 5 thermal paste.
But after tht it seems getting worse.
Im getting rlod for games tht is ok b4.
Now I can play SF4 only.
Other intensive game like uncharted 2, gta4, RDR, la noire will get rlod.
So is my ps3 is as good as dead already?
Any sifu here got experience on applying thermal paste?
I still haven play uncharted 3 my ps3 cannot die now T_T

sorry to hear that  , 3.7x firmware above is killing phat units .