The 4 hour doubling is the secret, once I hit that everything else just fell into place.

$82 for two people sounds normal, not some big win.

Honestly, that shedding gunk thing is wild. I've never heard of a thermal pad basically disintegrating on contact like that, it sounds like something out of a horror movie for your console. And the fact that it made load times worse before it even died, that's a whole other level of frustrating. Tbh I would have been so mad I'd probably have tossed the whole PS5 out the window, you got way more patience than me. At least the name brand fix was cheaper than the junk you started with, that's some kind of messed up logic right there.

Ha, I saw a girl on TikTok do the same thing with a receipt notebook!

That $80 could have covered a whole new tool or a couple hours of labor on the actual problem. Sounds more like you got lucky on a simple fix, not that the tester is some kind of magic wand.