PS5 Teardown Video Gets Up Close and Personal with the Console

Glad to see the sides are so easily removed. Im sure some DIY painting vids will pop up within days of release, definitely going to paint one of ours black!

Finally. So SSD mounted to the PCB, and a single M.2 expansion bay... and that heatsink is brilliant. And they did go with a liquid metal thermal agent. Nice.

I feel like the PS5 gets bigger and bigger every time i see it.

Just like Crash! It's about time 😅

So different face plates should be available then?

@Oh_fiddlesticks or the people keep getting smaller and smaller.

What are people on here going to comment about now that they can't complain that Sony is holding out on us with the hardware teardown?

massive heat sink and liquid metal thermal paste looking amazing on cooling side

@NeuralDeclan the lack of UI showcase.

@NeuralDeclan Oh people will find something to complain about lol, just you wait!

Damn that heat sink is freaking huge

Also taking a page out of Razer and Asus' books by applying thermal paste preemptively to the internals for better cooling? Nice

Clever way of holding and hiding the screw. Seems a little unnecessary, but neat. Wish this was in English.

@SirAngry I'm happy that you got what you wanted after all those comments, I have also have been waiting for a long time for this!

@NeuralDeclan Something something UI, something something game price lol

@Bdbrady It has full subtitles on YouTube. Not sure if you saw that.

Oh man, the faceplates are game changers! Can’t wait to see all the custom/official ones. Finally, a system where I won’t have to buy another just for a specific edition.

Looks very cool outside and inside. I do like it.

Hands up who got half way through the video before remembering to turn the subtitles on

Nice to see the SSD drive bay size. Still need a definitive measurement for compatibility.

@NeuralDeclan
I’m guessing UI snd back compat boosting.

Since when does Sony do teardowns of its own hardware? Very cool!

@Mergatro1d Me! I was too excited to see the inside of the console that I paid no attention to that fact I didn't understand a word he was saying, except for USB-Type C! 😂

That bit where he was taking the outsides off made me very nervous I reckon I would brake it :-/ Looks lovely inside tho

@phil_j Real heroes don't wear capes.

In the disclaimer at the end of the video: "The dust catcher does not guarantee the hardware from clogging with dust"

So clean your damn room and consoles, people! 😂

@Crimson_Ridley I'm glad it wasn't just me

@DualshockInfinit it was the key thing for me. I have a few take away notes:

1) the heatsink is massive and complex with contact points on both sides of the motherboard.

2) liquid metal as the contact medium between the APU and heatsink is brilliant. I'm glad the patent wasn't wasted. That's a really nice addition.

3) that is a hefty fan, the bigger the fan / blades the less rotations that are needed to shift the air = a lot less noise.

4) the spacing of the components is good. Might be far apart, but it'll help with heat dissipation.

5) Thermal compound on all components, and everything cooled... nice.

6) The PCB it's all mounted on is a very chunky (thick) board. That's good. Less chance of warping under heat.

Generally I think that's a very well engineered console, particularly the cooling solution. Looking at the heatsink on the XSX I'm now concerned it might not be enough, either that or Sony have gone for massive over kill. Whatever the truth the PS5 solution looks superior in every way, obviously material and heat pipe compounds permitting.

I'd love 2 kinds of faceplates: transparent (to make the console looks a bit thinner) or golden (to pretend it's a football trophy I won when I was still able to run after a ball).

Is that a chisel? Among the four(!!!) screwdrivers (including precision screwdriver), it looks like there's a chisel on the table!

EDIT: Okay, it's just a really large flathead to remove the base.

@JapaneseSonic Can't you activate them? Look at the three dots on the bottom right.

This is immense and shows how serious Sony have taken the cooling. That fan is huge and liquid metal, future is here, not long to go!

@Mergatro1d
Rather, hands up those who completely forgot subtitles were available until reading the comments, then watched the whole vid again, lol.

@TheFrenchiestFry
Exactly what I thought, massive heat sink!
I bet it's very much needed when released games are going to be optimized for the PS5.

On topic:
I really love the ingenuity that goes into designing hardware. My OCD had no issues whatsoever looking at this 🤣.

@itsMeaningless yes, it's the M.2 SSD bolt for holding expansion SSDs in place.

Finally glad to see this, It looks like they went big on cooling and very pleased to see how easy the wings come off and where the easy to get to SSD upgrade slot is. Pretty Impressed.

@SirAngry I reckon Sony will space it out rather than give us all the details all at once, so the teardown is probably all our info for this week. Maybe the UI has some super novel feature they don't want XSX robbing off them in a day 1 patch or something hence why Sony are saving it for last?

@NeuralDeclan Sony censorship

.. surprising there's no 'optical out' port... but I suppose that's dying a bit now... now if someone could just confirm it supports Atmos...

so one type A for psvr, one for camera, one for additonal storage, and type c for twin charger? that's a full house! what about 3D headphone dongle - where will that go?!?! :S

@Mergatro1d well I totally didn't read this comment and then watch it again 🤫

I like that the heat sink is super huge and there's vacuum point for dust 😃

@Bdbrady watch it on YouTube and turn on English CC.

Edit: I see Phil already told you once I scrolled down.

No "RRoD" for this beauty! God damn I can't wait.

Liquid metal cooling sounds fancy AF. Liquid Metal sounds like a boss from Metal Gear.

You have to love the disclaimers:

"Risk of exposure to laser radiation, electrical shock, or other injury."

"The dust catcher does not guarantee the hardware clogging from dust."

@NeuralDeclan I don't think Microsoft will be just able to implement some of the PS5's UI features. I just don't think they're ready to show it yet. The teardown was the really annoying / bizarre one to me, because once we saw what the console looked like it was all set in stone, so why no teardown? Only Sony's marketing team really know. The UI has already been seen by developers, well many developers, as they've got production units in some studios now. So it'll either leak, or Sony will get there first.

Looks like a really well made machine. The design of it is really growing on me, too. I'm starting to kind of love it?

Wow. The heatsink is huge. That explains the size of the machine. Its truly a beast of a console.

I'll be honest, im not sure what was going on for half of what i watched, but it looks great. Now to find remortgage my house and build a special annex to fit the PS5 in.

@Rob_230
The CC is in English. Turn it on.

@SirAngry From what I read about the way PS5 is engineered on digital foundry (and I’ll admit I didn’t get all of it, being a simple fella myself) the cooling system will be crucial to its performance, which explains why they’ve taken it so seriously (beyond eliminating jet engine fan noise!). To quote the article:
‘ PlayStation 5 is given a set power budget tied to the thermal limits of the cooling assembly. "It's a completely different paradigm," says Cerny. "Rather than running at constant frequency and letting the power vary based on the workload, we run at essentially constant power and let the frequency vary based on the workload." ‘

Which I take to mean, as long as it’s kept cool enough it can operate at peak and will need to downclock to keep within power budget very rarely, and in a way that affects the player in a minimal way.

Anyway, it’s a very nifty, well engineered machine by the looks of it!

That came out of nowhere haha

Better late than never, I guess. Now when does GT7 launch?

@twenty90seven they done a PS4 and psvr tear down back when.

@themightyant interesting.

1) The homeshare feature has been rumoured for a while, it was in a patent. The idea of loaning a digital game, I believe was the consensus of what the patent seemed to suggest. But I have no idea what it is.

2) I fully expect PS+ and PS Now to morph into the same service / tiers of service. Here's what I heard months ago:

PS+ = lowest tier, game discounts / online play and a game collection, no monthly free games, cheaper than current sub.

PS+ Gold = middle tier, current PS Now but with online play thrown in, more akin to Game Pass.

PS+ Platinum = top tier, all of the above but with streaming to other devices.

This wasn't from a Sony rep but a third party publisher strategist. Who knows? I do expect PS Now and PS+ to change though.

Whatever they've been feeding that PS5 they need to stop its obese. Or maybe that bloke is really really small ?

I think I missed the part where he points out where the SSD expansion can be put in. Can anyone help me out?

Nice!! The liquid metal for cooling and embedded SSD sounds promissing.

@NeuralDeclan
The Twitter comments are full of trolls and toxics already.

@themightyant
Sounds like, instead of having multiple accounts listing a PS5 as “primary” other accounts need to enable “home share”.
Hopefully this means no change. Multiple accounts can share everything on the console, but I don’t see a need for the change so it’s a bit concerning. Worst case, I won’t be able to play the games my wife got on her account because I’m primary and homeshare only allows her to share my games. She can’t be primary...I can’t imagine Sony would be so brain dead as to make that change but...£70

@themightyant yeah I got that email too

Now where are all the naysayers and Xbox fanboys saying the PS5 will explode because of overclocking ?? Whilst the series X is a mini microwave ;p

I stopped watching after he took off the faceplates. I get all nervous when folks dismantle stuff that are valuable in my eyes (like a video game console in this instance). I'm like ahhh don't break it! Cool video nonetheless.

@Oh_fiddlesticks Really? It's actually smaller than I expected.

I’m getting the X first but the PS5 is pretty exciting. If the tech can perform like Cerny suggested I think Sony are well ahead of the curve.

They have thrown the kitchen heatsink in there!

I thought that stand was pretty slick. And with the outside so easily removable there will be tons of colors and designs to choose from on the net.

@CKFilms They covered it, it was another plate that had to be removed after removing the side plates.

Looks great, hopefully some custom side panels.

Only issue I see is that both my 5,000GB/s Gen 4 NVMe (Rocket 4 and MP600) have a beefy heat sink to keep cool if using on a GEN4 slot.

Hopefully there is some airflow in that NVMe bay.

@OneManDroid Astro announced that an HDMI splitter will be available starting this month to make all optical headset compatible with Series X and PS5

Ok the one thing I really don’t understand is how we expand the SSD, I thought there was supposed to be a second bay where you could at a compatible NVME drive but they didn’t mention that at all at least not in what I could gather in English

@NeuralDeclan the UI lol

@Ha1frican that was at 2:46 in video showing the expansion bay for the SSD.

Guys .. Who vacum inside his console xD ?

@DualshockInfinit
Just put on English subtitles, they're translated

@themightyant looks like it will take different sizes as the bay has 4 NVMe mounting holes for 80, 60 and 42mm length SSD's couldn't make out the number for the shortest one but guessing that for a 30mm length NVMe.

@Agramonte i doubt either will be quick enough for use / compatibility with the PS5 I/O controller.

That is sweet 🤠

I'm looking forward to some sweet third party waifu face plates.

😄-I was so excited that when I started to watch the video about half way through I remembered that I could turn on subtitles...lol😂. So I started it over...lol.😂
😃-SONY's patented liquid metal heatsink for the chip was frick'n cool! (pun intended)
😃-According to their patent, it drops the chip temperature alone a further 20°Celsius or for us in the U.S of A, that's 68°Fahrenheit cooler and that's not counting the MASSIVE heatsink or the Jumbo double sided cooling fan, or the MASSIVE Void of an interior the PS5 has to pull and push that heat out of all those vents!
😊- I love the over engineering that Sony put into the system, because unless your playing the PS5 in EXTREME desert like 🔥HOT environment the system should stay ⛄FROSTY❄ cool!

😅-And what about both panels easily popping off to customize the console in the future, is mind blowingly cool!

@Bdbrady turn on subtitles

@feral1975 I already did

@Oh_fiddlesticks that's what your girl keeps telling me!!

Don't mind me
Couldn't resist

I dig it. Panel is easy to remove(good for future customization) . Has a dust catcher and the fan is easy to get to. Oh and liquid metal cooling is a great choice of course. I don't really have any complaints. Looks well designed.

@God_of_Nowt I've seen the stuff on social media about XSX. Yes. However, if it wasn't venting hot air out of the top I'd be concerned. The YouTuber that burnt his had on the SSD card though was troubling. I'd suggest that's a faulty pre-production unit. The heatsink looked adequate when I saw it, though I said at the time a dual fan set up one pushing one pulling would've been my preference. My gut is telling me the XSX should be fine. Looking at the two if you asked me which has the best cooling solution, without knowing what's in the heat pipes etc.... well, I'd have to say the PS5 no question. The thicker PCB also makes me happy, as does the direct cooling of every component. I just can't imagine Microsoft would release a system with the potential for RRoD mk.2. I don't buy it.

Is it just me or it sounded like he said PlayStation Virus's when saying PlayStation 5 😅

Ps5 looks better than i expected.its big like the ps3 fat.that teardown is 😎 cool.word up son

@OmegaStriver Ah I see it, right before they break the warranty seal on the console. Looks simple enough, and I hope they release the list of compatible drives soon.

FINALLY!

Overall it looks pretty cool and well made, which is reassuring. Glad to see they really went big on the fan with all that space. The heatsink is...maybe a bit much? That's a lot of copper, looks crazy heavy. I'm curious since they said it is a heat pipe designed to give similar performance to a vapor chamber, and MS keeps going with vapor chambers, the 30xx cards are using vapor chambers, what made them choose this solution? I get that vapor chambers can be expensive to produce, but this much pure copper can't exactly be any, if at all cheaper (and probably costs more in transportation fees to move containers of them around.) It's an interesting choice.

But it all also looks easily repairable and serviceable, well laid out, well designed, which is nice, and lots of user access to the cooling system and cleanout parts is nice. The thing may be fugly, and the stand setup may be absurdly overdesigned, but overall it looks like they put together a well made machine this time - light years ahead of PS4's rickety build, that's for sure!

Very different, interesting designs from MS and Sony this time. Both look great.

Now I'm just waiting for them to surprise us and tell us that BC does in fact enhance PS4 games in some way rather than just emulating a PS4/Pro!

@SirAngry Since the PS5's hardware "gimmick" is that dynamic overclock, compared to the constant clocks on the Series X, I'm guessing the overkill thermal solution has a lot to do with maintaining temps when it goes into that extreme OC, not necessarily necessary for "normal" running. Series X has to mostly only handle constant thermals without the crazy surge of heat the overclock likely delivers, so a more constant airflow probably does the job without needing the sort of Dyson effect we see here (complete with bagless dust cup! )

@Bdbrady Just turn on the CC Subtitles for all the speaking bit in English. It worked a treat for me.

My new biggest fear which I have never had before is that once something happens to your internal storage solution you are done for good. Like you won't be able to just switch to a new ssd and install os from usb and be running like nothing happened. I hope that it's durable.

@NEStalgia the overclock isn't a gimmick. RDNA2 is targeting 2.2GHz to 2.4GHz, that much is clear from the stuff coming out from Navi 21, and 22. If anything you could say the XSX is under-clocked. I've told people repeatedly on this forum and elsewhere that the PS5 is designed to pretty much sit at those higher clocks, and drop when it's not needed, but no one listens. AMDs Big Navi roadmap in 2018 stated they were targeting over 2.0GHz with their architecture, seems like they've hit it. It's also worth pointing out that the PS5 heatsink is cooling way more than just the APU / SoC. It looks like a really solid solution couple with the liquid metal thermal compound. If you asked right now which design will cool better, I can't think of any advantage the XSX solution would have over the PS5's solution.

Sexual... (Is that it? Can't you think of something else to say?)... Urrrrnnnngghhhh!

@manux59 I did it once for pro, wasn't that much dusty, but still cleaner than it was.

Looks really well engineered. Some really good ideas and well implemented. Looks like they took all the slagging about the noise of the PS4 Pro to heart. 😂 Will be interesting to see what new panels get released for it. 3rd party ones are going to go nuts! Remember all the different PS1 cases you could get.

Doesn't the PS5 look even bigger in this video or is it just me?

@SirAngry I put gimmick in quotes purposely. Gimmick doesn't necessitate something being useless, though common connotation implies that. It only refers to it's notably unique feature/implementation. The quotes were to address that leap in thinking, though apparently, they weren't effective

Given this cooling solution, though, it appears you may be right that it's designed to sit at that overclock more times than not. Though I still presume this is a significant reason for needing such a cooling solution.

That being said, though, with Smartshift, doesn't that mean the GPU can only OC when the CPU is reduced utilization?

I'm speechless. this is really state of the art technology. it can't get newer than this.

That heat sink was beautiful, Sony has prepared well for this generation.

@NEStalgia not really. Smartshift doesn't quite work like that from the analyser on the PS5. Being honest I've not seen any code max out both, but the suggested ceiling for both seems to be close to peak performance. We'll know a lot more once we get a few years in. The PS5 and RDNA2 are clearly intended to run at these clocks though, and that does have implications for shaders m, ROPs and TMUs, because if this is their intended clocks, running under them might not be wise.

So you need a wrench if you plan to have it sit horizontally?

@SirAngry So many unknowns still! My biggest concerns with the PS5 was the implications of Smartshift on the OC/CPU, and the inability to handle the thermals at the OC for long duration. This cooling solution does seem designed entirely around that idea, so I can see what you're saying be true (or at least the intention.)

@Bdbrady there are english subtitles available.

Bender watching like 👀

The customizability should be easy, intuitive, and perhaps the best of any console ever. Sony should have a bunch of custom colors and designs for the panels in the works, and I'm a bit surprised they don't have custom ones ready to sell at launch.
The actual internal design is a lot better than I thought it would be. It's not the messy clutter I was expecting, it would actually seem like they favor design over performance and I thought they were going the opposite.

Some of it's design aspects are rather worrying though. The heatsink is outdated and I find their claims of vapor-chamber equivalence to be dubious at best and deceptive at worst. The dust collectors point toward an internal airflow problem(as does the general design) and I imagine a lot of people 8-12 months after launch will start having their PS5's overheat because of clogging. I live somewhere very hot and dusty and do not want to be cleaning my console every few months so it's a shame that seems to be exactly what they want me to do(On a side note, unless you want to brick your console, NEVER vacuum it's internals. This dude gave some very bad advice there). The XSX's cooling solution is far more robust and the PS5 generates a lot more heat so I imagine the PS5 will have a lot more issues in this department.
That SSD slot is very dumb and I do not understand why they just didn't go with the expansion card route. They have one expansion slot and you have to tear into your console if you want to swap it. Not very thought out. I'll probably buy the largest and fastest drive I can and just stick it in there forever.

This was a perfectly adequate breakdown and we should have gotten it back in March. What exactly was the purpose of waiting this long? They didn't really show us anything that we didn't already know about.

@flummerfelt you mean like xbox 360 did 15 years ago? Lol

@Mpquikster I love how when xbox is see as "as big as refrigerator" it's awful and a terrible design and then when it turns out it's significantly smaller and much more manageable then the oddly shaped and HUGE ps5 suddenly being big is is seen as "powerful" and not a failure of design one in which the goal is to have the most powerful and the quietest AND within as small a package as possible.

To me the size here and your immediate thoughts to a slim down version in a couple years points to it being a failure to innovate fully.

The series X heat reports though seem to have been blown out of proportion and taken out of context, if there were an issue with the amount of units out there I would expect there to be 100's of reports which there are not. Also with the amount of airflow (70% more air flow than One X) and with power of these consoles I'd expect it to be venting hot air like a PC.

One of of the 2 people that mentioned the heat went on to post this later

"People are using something I said on the podcast, clipped and out of context, where I said it was enough heat to warm up a room... except I go on to say that's like a high-end PC, Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, etc. Electronics make rooms warm unless you have AC."

@710King the point of the wait was to not allow you long to contemplate on it befote having to decide.

At 4:45 you can see the battery on MB and it's gone on the next shot. I wonder what led them to do this.

Ok, now i believe this thing is quiet. That HS is HUGE!
Overall i feel the system is well made.

@Oh_fiddlesticks that’s what she said

@SirAngry no it's the console it's a freaking behemoth! And people were giving the Xbox crap for being so big.... Lmao

@Mpquikster Everything can be slim down with the years.
As soon as they change to a smaller litography in the future, power and heat goes down, so the size goes down too.

And the mysterious nut was just a fan cover bolt....

@jiricek9 Looks like they had 2 different boards so they could show you a picture of the clean chip with out the liquid metal thermal cooling on it. Later on when the cooling is back on the chip the battery is back.

@andreoni79 that's definitely not true. You only have to remove the white panel which is required to add storage and wouldn't void your warranty.

@Trivial I suppose you are replying here to what I wrote in another topic: I watched the video again, but it seems to me you can actually remove the fan only detaching it from the console and to do that you have to remove the big black sticker...

@themightyant Looks deep enough, just needs a bit of airflow for the HS fins.

@SirAngry If the 5,000MB/s Rocket 4 needs a heat sink. The new Rocket 4 Plus that runs at 7,000MB/s will also need one.

Even the cheap B550 boards have a heat sink on top of the Gen4 NVMe slot. At 5,000/7,000MB/s They run hot.

You can notice at 6:00 that they also cooling their storage dims with the main heat sink. They have thermal paste on them

@Bamila
Have your ever had the internal hard drive of any console fail?

@BlueOcean
The guy is sitting low down and is further away. Plus he’s Asian (I’m part Chinese, not being prejudiced, just accurate).
On the stand it’s around 15inches I believe. Larger than anything we’ve ever seen before.

@Fenbops I don't think it has any edge over the series X(apart from the SSD). Or can you give an example of areas where the ps5 will perform better than the series X other than faster loading and all that SSD related topics ??

Liam sounds like a posh geordie.

@thefourfoldroot Thanks.

@SamMR I’ve got an X preordered and not a PS5 so I’m not biased but I think the custom SSD in the PS5 is impressive and more forward thinking than what MS went with. Weather it’s enough to give it a proper edge over the more powerful X we don’t know yet.

Surprised nobody has yet mentioned the WiFi 6 snd super fast USBs. Impressive.

@Fenbops
It’ll be used in very impressive ways by first party devs, but the question is whether third party will utilise it to quickly stream in assets based on player view. Which I suppose depends on whether it’s a useful technique on Xbox.

@Agramonte I'm not talking about the size of the drive. I'm talking about the I/O and priority levels coupled with sequential read not bring quick enough. I'm not sure by the end of 2020 there will be any SSDs that are quick enough to actually match the baseline performance and brute force it. I kinda hope Marvell and Sony decide to licence the controller to third parties to make like for lunch me compatible drives.

Ha ha it's huge! I will be waiting for the slim version in 2-3 years! Bonkers, no-one will fit that in under their AV cabinet.

@Oh_fiddlesticks its ridiculous!

@Cybrshrk Yeah that’s true! I was never able to do that, mine had the red ring of death, RIP. Lol. But in general, not many consoles have had a faceplate that easily swappable. Ones that come to mind are the 360 (a minor front plate, not the whole case), 3DS, & GBA Micro... tho the latter two are handhelds.

So yeah, this is a game changer and a very welcomed thing from Sony. That white shell has to go.

That'd be so sweet to see faceplates in the style of the "clear" plastic that was used for some N64 and GBA models. Seeing a purple or seafoam-green version of those faceplates would really knock my socks off!

or a matte grey style faceplate like the PSX/1 had. with the old logo of course

That was fantastic. Every piece carefully considered. The cooling is outstanding. The faceplates are an unexpected game changer. Top end tech. It’s a balanced beast. And the beautiful careful layout of all the components at the end absolutely did NOT make me freak out as they all were aligned, straight, and not randomly just put down.
I checked.

For size reference all they need to do is to place a real PS5 next to a real PS4 PRO on a table. The guy in the video could be 4 foot 8 for all we know.

Snap and slide off and on is not always easy for me i have found. The good thing is that those plastic wings when removed should be easy to spray paint black if a black model is not available. Also for those that desire custom colors and designs the possibilities are limitless.

Wow! And finally! This video was great. I am wondering how much this thing costs Sony to make. That is one very intricate and large system. It’s so funny to me that XSX looks like the Japanese console (2.5 Gamecubes) and PS5 looks like the American attempt.

I am excited.

@Oz_Momotaro that heatsink is anything but "oldskool" it's a mightily impressive piece of engineering. All my PC building buddies and my competitive OC Friends, we all really like what Sony have shown.

Ya gotta hand it to Sony. They did not need to include those vacuum points, or even make this video.

Couldn't be happier to get my hands on this when the day comes.

Looks like the most impressive internals ever seen in a console. Liquid metal, double sided fan, vibration dampeners, rail-gun heatsink!

@NEStalgia
CPU doesnt downclock to give more power to the GPU. That's not what SmartShift does. That's not what Cerny said.
I blame Digital Foundry and Eurogamer for spreading misinformation and console warriors are latching on to it to this day.

@Medic_Alert
Hi man. Look, I'm not a tech guy at all. I'm nobody very humble person. I only listened to Cerny carefully. Everyone should listen carefully.
So here is what I got from what he said in short about SmartShift:

SmartShift has nothing to do with variable frequencies. Cpu and Gpu have each a power budget. When the cpu doesnt use all its power budget, SmarShift sends the UNUSED juice to the Gpu. That's all. The variable frequencies is Cerny special sauce that allows what he calls a continuous boost for both cpu and gpu. Its not the same thing as SmartShift.

@Ridwaano Left speechless.

@Oz_Momotaro Everything looks really accessible and easy too clean so its a way forward. Bigger is a thing i can live with. It looks like its build too last i love it.

@80sImporter Its looks like a console thats easy too maintain.

@JJ2 this, it's not SmartShift on the PS5 APU. It has different parameters for its function boundaries for starters. My brain hurts from all the brain-dead tech talk about these consoles. I think Digital Foundry has been one of the worst things to happen to gaming. They quite often get technical explanations wrong, and then gamers treat their explanations as gospel. It can be painful. There's a chap on YouTube called NX Gamer I think, his technical explanations tend to be far better, especially around things like Ray Tracing. He deserves more coverage / subs.

@Medic_Alert if you say take the CPU cores dedicated to running the OS during game function, truth is they're not taxed, so supplying them with energy is pointless. You switch that over to the GPU. It doesn't work quite like that, and I'm not entirely sure if they can target individual cores / CUs on the PS5, but I'm hearing they might be able to boost individual components inside CUs. To be clear, I think that sounds like bollocks to me, and I have no idea how it'd work in terms of coherency, but, it's not coming from Neogaf or Reddit console warriors, it's coming from developers. The PS5 is set up to run the GPU at those higher clocks, but to reduce those clocks when not needed. That's how it was explained to me nearly 2 years ago. So it drops cycles (clocks) when a game isn't so computationally expensive, and that saves on energy consumption, component wear and heat dissipation. If it can target specific components though, well, that's revolutionary.

@NEStalgia From what I've read, it seems the PS5 operates to a set power budget which is tied to the limits of the cooling system (hence the crazy serious cooling solution). So the PS5 should never be able to get to overheat, because it will always operate to the predetermined power budget and therefore within the capability of the cooling system. But I may have misunderstood this, if so maybe someone with a bit more technical knowledge could explain

@Medic_Alert sort of. Yeah. I know of a game currently planned to launch in January 2021 that essentially is pushing the GPU hard, mainly because I think it's not well optimized... but... I'll park that for now. It runs the GPU in gameplay quite hard, but on the CPU side it doesn't seem to tax the CPU anywhere near as much. Might be because of last gen legacy code. So, despite pushing the GPU hard, it's not touching thermal throttling limits because the CPU spends most of the time twiddling it's thumbs and picking it's nose. It will be interesting to see how the thermal throttling works when both are seeking peak clocks for protracted periods. What is clear though now we're seeing RDNA 2 tech specs, is that these RDNA 2 CU's are meant to be run at over 2.0GHz, in fact the AMD geometry and RT functions are clearly meant to be run at higher clocks, they rely on them and appear clock sensitive. I'm going to be interested to see the first generation of games, and how they perform. I still expect the XSX to have a slight frame advantage, but I'm interested to see how the PS5 handles geometry, pixel fill rates, alpha effects, RT and coherency. Because I think it might have a per operation advantage in these areas.

@Medic_Alert
@Medic_Alert
The frequencies will only downclock 2% if the activity risks taking the total power budget beyond its limit (10% in that case). SmartShift is helping even if a little.
There was a nice explanation on how variable frequencies translate into the equivalent of a continuous boost from a guy way smarter than I am haha.

Gimme a min

Edit
Here if you r interested:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/playstation-5-system-architecture-deep-dive-ot-secret-agent-cerny.175780/post-36022468

@JJ2 Thanks for that link, I hadn't seen that. I'm not by any means a hardware guy but I thought I'd understood the basics of what Cerny said at the time. Subsequent talk about it made me think I'd heard something most people hadn't!

@God_of_Nowt Shame the dev talk has fallen through, I'd love to hear more from people who actually know what they're talking about. Is there no way you guys could do an online talk instead? Youtube channel people could subscribe to and contribute towards the cost?

@God_of_Nowt oh God, that DF talk "explaining" how RT was working in Mikes-Morales with reference to an RTX 2060 was it hurt my forehead. Because I was smashing it into the desk. The PS5 is great at maintaining coherency in off screen geometry, something the 20XX series isn't so hot at. So no, it isn't comparable. Also talking about the MS counts for doing x, y and z hurt too. I need to get and understand the data throughput and data management of the PS5 much, much better. I think for current paradigms / ways of doing things the XSX is bang on. I have a sneaky suspicion as we all learn to manage flow around and across CUs within the PS5 extracting performance should be easier. I'm wigging out for a few days as I'm doing some homework myself.

@SirAngry @God_of_Nowt So what I'm gathering here is that SmartShift is really about power saving and TDP, not about performance boosting? It's not the original impression that came off on it from Cerny's talk, though it sounds much more "AMD" that what appeared to be described.

At the same time, I have concerns about anything pegged against the limits of the cooling. They certainly did build the cooling around it but that's always been a dodgy concept. It leads to those irritating situations where performance can vary based on ambient temperatures. If the fan can spin up like a jet again, if needed maybe it works out fine, but if you can end up with a situation where a machine running in Brazil may perform worse than one running in Canada due to average ambient temperatures being extremely different....that reminds me of PS3

On the line of thought involving early games performing better until all the optimization of PS5 can be really worked out, that leaves me with a few thoughts. There's going to be a marketing, and viral marketing (DF etc) advantage for MS in there. Many games aren't going to be deeply optimizing for PS5 specifically if PCs don't start following the same available techniques. Big titles may, and PS5 focused titles may, but many will not. And, the other way around, does not the SeriesX|S also have a lot of optimization approaches available, though largely software tricks through DX rather than brute force hardware techniques that also will evolve as devs learn to optimize for it potentially keeping the power discrepancy at parity with early games?

@Trajan yeah just noticed that, thanks

@SirAngry Yeah, not talking about size but Speed + Heat.

For Sony to keep the 5,500MB/s it needs to cool the SSD/controller with the main PS5 heat sink (see it on min 6:00)

For me to keep my Sabrant Rocket 4 at 5,000MB/s I need to have a heat sink on. It comes in the box with a warning

Why I was wondering if there is some sort of airflow in that bay. What controller/io is used will not change the fact that after 3,500MB/s you need to deal with the heat coming off the SSD.

@Agramonte it's an interesting question. Maybe there's airflow, but the angles in that company would mean turbulence, therefore noise; they might be banking on heat transfer through the socket, but I'll need to have a closer look at the teardown video to see how viable that is.

@theheadofabroom I keep thinking maybe they are diverting a bit from the main fan from behind

They are showing the WD Black SN850 with a heatsink. But if there is no airflow, that will just buy a bit of time before it starts to throttle down to keep cool.

Just more fun discovering stuff when it finally gets here 😀

@Oz_Momotaro
The PS5 is not defined by it's heat-sink It's defined by its games. The whole side-plate removal look to be just as easy to remove as a back-plate. I am happy about that because it will allow better dust cleaning.

You seem to be here to promote Xbox as your choice. Also to fan some console wars flames. I myself am sure anyone that buys a XBox will be just as happy with their choice as I am with my PS5 choice.

@Agramonte so after a couple of careful rewatches, it looks like a bit of both. As shown in your photo, it sits between the top front vent and the fan, so in airflow. There are a couple of fins sticking out of the same-side EM shield, which appears to have a small heatsink at the back for the onboard SSD. It also seems like the screw which secures the m2 drive in place screws into the EM shield on the opposite side of the motherboard, which contacts the main heatsink.

Remains to be seen how effective this is, but it is probably getting about as much ventilation as the m2 in my PC, but that's only 3500mbps, so who knows?

Playstation 5 Pro, will be a motherboard upgrade, mark my words 🤗

@Oz_Momotaro Thats your opinion and perspective. You're welcome to have it. I and a few others have opinions and perspectives that differ. Seems you really want a PS5 but are so rapped up in your perceived design flaws. That you refuse to buy the console you want most. Otherwise why would anyone put so much energy explaining all the things you dislike about it. There are literally thousands of product I don't want, but I have never ranted about them. For the sole reason that I do not care for them.

@God_of_Nowt..... This sounds like insane paradigm shift engineering by Marc Cerny and Sony............. Thanks for sharing such technical insite..... We see how it runs...... But it seems like the Ps5 is something we don't even know we need... Which will be mind blowing once you guys gets to grips with it..... Very exciting times

@God_of_Nowt Hey, if you guys are receptive to doing it, I'll keep reminding you! I'm a software engineer (commercial) but have some passing experience with hardware, albeit very outdated now. Seeing what they're doing now with the hardware, Sony primarily but MS to a degree, absolutely fascinates me.
I get the frustration around NDA's from both sides of the fence. It seems a bit odd that, with just a month to launch, some are still in effect. I guess some will expire on the 28th.

@God_of_Nowt I can imagine that gets pretty frustrating.

I guess you could argue, given that you're working with an SDK others have access to, that it would not be unreasonable for someone else to have come up with the same approach independently. Therefore it would seem reasonable for you to use it for both projects as long as you compromise neither or re-use exactly the same source if it's effectively owned by one party.

Anyway, getting a bit off topic and I certainly appreciate it can be complicated.

@Agramonte & @Theheadofabroom air is pulled into the SSD compartment via the front air vents and then out via a gap at the top towards the fan as it pulls the air in to the system.

@Oz_Momotaro there's an Ex-EA Dev who is making his own indie engine called Cherno, I think someone told me he has two channels now, but he's done some reaction videos to game reveals when he talks pretty competently about what's on screen. If you are interested in that stuff though there are presentations on technology developed by Devs at conferences, you can find the videos online.

@NEStalgia no, what you're misunderstanding is that the variable clocks in the PS5 are not SmartShift. Not even close. SmartShift might provide the architectural framework on top of which Sony have built their variable clocks, but it isn't SmartShift. It works in completely different ways

As to heat dissipation and throttling, well that fan will be calibrated to spin at variable revolutions, all systems throttle under heat loads, even my water cooled PC in summer here had issues. So yeah, if you're in a warmer environment performance is affected if the system can not keep the components in their optimal thermal operating temperatures. Thing is, Sony seem to have taken that incredibly seriously. Looking at the raw thermal capacity that heatsink will provide... well... they've given themselves some head room I'd guess.

@GREGORIAN it is, as in a paradigm shift. The PS5 is engineered for data throughput. Lots of data throughput. It has a large cache advantage too. The simple truth is you throw large assets (data wise) at it and it simply goes om nom nom, more please!

To use an analogy I heard from a Dane (maybe @God_of_Nowt might appreciate it too), he said it's like a sausage factory. You could have 52 sausage machines in one factory, and 36 in the other. The 36 sausage machines are faster, but you'd expect the 52 sausage machines to make more sausages. However, the first factory has a massive opening in it and the meat is delivered via large trucks. Meanwhile the other factory has small openings, so the trucks are unloaded outside and the meat carried in by hand. Keeping the 36 sausage machines supplied is really easy, keeping the 52 sausage machines supplied takes a lot of work. Eventually you'll get efficient at running the 52 sausage machine factory, but you'll never have the advantage in meat (data) flow the other factory has.

I thought that was simultaneously the best analogy about the architectural differences between the two systems, but also the most Danish analogy I'd ever heard... they like a good pork based product in Denmark, normally served with beer. God I miss nights out in Copenhagen. Truth is taking that sausage factory analysis to extremes actually helps further. You see in the 36 machine factory the ingredients are kept in individual storage units and the machine can take what they need automatically to make different blend / recipes on the fly, and just remove say sage from the mix and replace it with mustard seeds. In the other factory you have to remove all the ingredients from the machine and load a new mixture in. That's the difference those custom scrubbers have on the PS5. Larger pool of cache, running at much higher clocks that gives an even further advantage because I can remove and replace specific pieces of data without having to flush the entire cache and reload a different collection of data into it. The reduction in lost operations that provides means hitting the mathematical theoretical limits on the PS5 should be technically easier than the XSX. There will always be "performance" locked away inside systems you'll just never reach, but there should be less in the PS5.

The only query really is what happens when those complex peak demand scenes hit the PS5, will it have the headroom to deal with the load? The XSX has more CUs to spread the load out too at those peak demand moments, and that should help it deal better when needing to maintain frames and resolution, but again it might not actually work out like that, because the PS5 is just so damn fast. That's what every developer says, the PS5 is fast. And it is.

@SirAngry @God_of_Nowt A belated thanks, both, btw. I didn't get around to a real reply, but I appreciate the extra info!

I'm getting a clearer idea of what the difference is now between the machines overall. Though I don't think it helps make anything definitive about how it will all go together at the end of 7 years. I see 7 years of analyzing every game to see which one it runs better on before buying ahead..... Though honestly given Sony's terrible overall business policies, the difference favoring PS5 would have to be pretty stark for a given game (or the sale pretty deep) to convince me to buy any multiplat on it

The other thing I wonder about is how optimized for PS5's features the majority of multiplats will really be if the overall design has to be such that it ports easily everywhere. And/or if a gap appears, if MS will step in to provide improved toolsets for using their hardware more efficiently. (Don't worry, we're all cursing out DirectX quietly.....though the last time I took a look at it, DirectDraw was still the main show. Never saw the console toolsets though.)

I came for the tags, stayed for the pork analogies.

@NEStalgia the question of optimisation is an interesting one, because right now I can tell you I know of two AAA games where they are really drilling down already into the PS5 versions of their game and making very big changes to the way the logic of the game runs. They're able to do this because the PS5 devkits and SDK just don't get in the way. The other point to make clear is that things like the cache scrubbers in the PS5 just work, no need to do anything "specific" to get that nice feature working. You can directly code them if you wish, but it isn't required right now, and the systems standard implementation is plenty good enough. I'd argue it's currently harder to optimise on the XSS and X because you 1) have two targets and 2) the development environment, the GDK just isn't as good and the tools aren't there, and in some cases might never be. I'm going to be interested to see where it all shakes out myself. I know of one game where the metrics are pretty much neck and neck right now, with both systems having minor advantages here and there, but I also know another game which is a little while away where the PS5 currently has both the frames and resolution advantage by quite the margin, although that could be down to how awkward the GDK is proving to be for some teams. Truth is, I don't think there'll be many knockout blows from third party multi-platform games.

@SirAngry I think that's the ideal, that the SDK is easy enough to use that optimizing doesn't require much effort. On the XSX side, I suppose if it's that much more difficult to optimize, I suppose the question then becomes how similar or dissimilar the DX environment is to what will be the standard on Windows, in terms of how the DX12 functionality is used in each, which also probably depends on PC hardware development, and how automated that process becomes, internally, for translating the Windows implementation to the XBox hardware.

I still can't get a feel for how XSS will affect things. The corporate version is that everything sould be built for XSX first, and then just optimized down to XSS. I imagine that's the "don't worry the fire will burn out when it runs out of fuel!" version of the story. I can imagine after the new console smell wears off, most studios will build for XSX take a hatchet and batter it down to run stable on XSS and call it a day. Or maybe the toolset will evolve quickly and further automate that process. They do seem to be putting a ridiculous amount of thought into this generation and automation tools to support it.

I get a weird sense that Sony's straight-forward SDK would be a better fit for indies, yet ironically MS seems to have the better indie outreach program at the moment. For the AAAs I imagine once everyone's familiar with the tools, it will be more like you say where they can run basically par without too much distinction for multiplats. Depending on how much effort is required, anyway.

It's the AAA developers who are taking issue with the GDK and optimisation. No disrespect intended to indie Devs, but actually MS's GDK approach helps them out most. They're unlikely to really "push" the hardware, and having a single development environment, no matter how wonky, across X1, X1S, X1X, XSS, XSX and PC probably helps them more. For AAA developers who are expected to wring every ounce of performance they can from any given console platform the development environment is sub-optimal.

But ironically giving Devs just a really streamlined, familiar and easy to use environment like Sony have done is probably preferable to indie Devs as well. You look at some of the games smaller studios have coming to PS5 and it's a big step up on last gen. I think Sony have nailed the development environment again.

@SirAngry....... All I can say is just Wow..... Totally jaw dropped and it sounds like Marc Cerny has indeed engineered a beast......