Your fat PS3 can be downgraded to 3.55 or lower if you'd like (2.30 minimum I believe). Since your model has a NOR chip, I suggest that you use the E3 solderless setup, since it is the easiest and you won't have to mess with soldering things onto your board.
If you are good with soldering, you can also use a Teensy++ 2.0 / Progskeet which would come out a bit cheaper. Keep in mind that if you decide to do this yourself, you will need to also reapply a new layer of thermal paste when exposing the board. There are a decent amount of good tutorials you can find on youtube that will guide you through the steps