This Is the PS5 SSD System Architect Mark Cerny Is Using

Good to learn he writes how he speaks.... 'sweeet'

That's all very well if you can afford it. Will wait for prices to drop BIG time.

I'm still baffledthat one of the most "exciting" things about this gen is storage. 😟

@Abarth_71 you can buy a heatsink also separately. This would be the most cost efficient solution currently.

His and hers SSDs?

Nothing says "I love you" like making your significant other remove the casing just to insert a...ooooh, I see what he did there!

You'd be mental going for the non-heatsink version, total false economy.

Do they integrate with the SSD controller hardware like the integrated SSD does?

@__jamiie It's the latest-gen SSD technology in a console - most of us would have scarcely believed we'd be getting SATA SSDs this generation right from the start, let alone PCIe ones of the same calibre that top PCs and Macs use.

@GamingFan4Lyf You don't have that job at Sony and not have multiple PS5s 😛

@PlayNation5 I mean, if the man wants a new PS5, he probably just builds one for himself in his basement.

Though, I think you missed the innuendo of my comment.

Well, you can't go wrong with WD or Samsung.

@GamingFan4Lyf In-YOUR-endo

@__jamiie it’s because in the past I/O time has been the silent cause of many problems. People will say they have lag when it’s really the HDD, or that their computer froze when really it’s waiting on IO. It was such a huge problem that the way games were design and shaped were all based around dealing with slow I/O.

Most games are cross-gen still so we’ve seen loading time differences, but not yet the real innovation which will be made possible through really fast I/O

@CielloArc WD are generally very good (they did have a bit of an issue with mechanical HDDs using inferior parts and hiding it, though), although I'd say they're second to Samsung as the latter makes their own SSD firmware controllers too which makes a big difference.

Sabrent are another good brand that review favourably and especially for the cost, although they may be loss-leading to build a name for themselves.

@PlayNation5 I know. And that's great. This gen just feels underwhelming so far. I'm hoping that things will improve once Sony and Microsoft FINALLY lay the last gen consoles to rest.

This is the one I ended up going with as well. Initially choose another brand but after seeing this tweet I decided he's probably the most reliable one to follow lol. Should be here Thursday!!

@CielloArc Agreed 2 best on the market !

"this is gonna be sweet and vandalise your wallet!" 👍👍😁😁😁

@redd214 very true. If it has Mark's seal of approval, you can't go wrong.

@PlayNation5 the only valid reason why one would buy a non-heatsink version is if you wanted to put a copper-only heatsink vs that WD built-in aluminium one.

@TheDudeElDuderino Excuse my ignorance- can you (or someone !) please explain about the need for a heatsink?

It did look a bit fat that SSD Could you imagine his Wife saying 'it doesn't fit you plonker' to him if he got the wrong one tho When I do get one one day I want it to come with the heatsink. All ready to just Install easier. Now all I got to wait for is the 4TB to be say under £200'ish...hmm never then

@Mergatro1d temperature/cooling = reliability and keeping the component save

@Mergatro1d Keeps the SSD's temperature cool, which means it won't have to slow down to achieve the same result. Enables the SSD to run at full-speed for a much longer time, basically, and at all times in a well-cooled system (which the PS5 certainly seems to be).

You can get generic heatsinks but the benefit of a factory-fitted one is that it's custom-made for that SSD and will therefore deliver the best result.

I hope to see a YouTube rage video in his lovely dulcet tones if:

1. It doesn't fit
2. It thermal throttles
3. He breaks the PS5 doing it

@__jamiie It is a shame that both Sony and Microsoft probably won't be laying last-gen to rest until 2023!

Seems like Microsoft's strategy of supporting X1 consoles for first 2 years wasn't such a ridiculous idea - though I think COVID had more to do with it on the Sony side than anything.

I am sure Sony was ready to ditch PS4 completely by 2022. I think the PS4 versions of GoW and GT7 would have been scrapped completely and never even announced if stock issues due to COVID weren't such a thing and PS5 had an even wider adoption rate. Both games would have been PS5-only

Flight Simulator is the only Microsoft first-party game that has released that is console exclusive to Series X|S and it seems to be the only one for a while, too! I mean, the game will eventually hit Xbox One, but it's via Cloud running on Series X hardware, so I could that as a Series X|S console exclusive.

So is this an admission that the storage is too small to start with?

@PlayNation5 @Pusher2021 thanks both, much appreciated

I'll just juggle the internal storage like I did with the PS4 until options become less expensive. I'm good for now.

@Mergatro1d what @Pusher2021 @PlayNation5 said, keeping the nvme chips bellow a certain temperature will ensure top performance, if the temp goes up, performance will suffer and long term you will be shortening that nvme's lifespan. I don't agree with the notion that a factory fitted heatsink is always the best. Most manufacturers choose aluminium as the metal of choice and coper is a bit better for this purpose.

@GamingFan4Lyf
That's a genius move by Xbox...they can gain the full benefits of new hardware whilst still supporting last gen install base by allowing them to stream the games to their consoles...whilst also ensuring more gamepass subs. Nothing held back. All the gains. Hopefully next year we'll start seeing every new release from them take full advantage of X/s like flight sim does.

I still dont have a ps5 yet, was planning on buying day 1. Actually glad i didnt as theres just no games i care about yet. The second a (ps5 only) street fighter comes thatd be the day or when uper high quality ps5 only horror games show up. Until then im still happy with my ps4

To answer the question: I have no need to expand my ps5 storage. I have well over a dozen games installed and that’s simply me being lazy in not deleting them mostly, as I only play a few games at once. Add to this the fact that PS5 games are smaller than PS4 games, and the launch model of the PS4 suited me fine and had a smaller hard drive, well, I see no need.

Then again, I’m the only one using my console (the wife rarely plays) and I don’t play online multiplayer so no need to keep loads of games installed in case other people want to play something other than what I’m playing at the time.

Get a 500GB for $114 and you at 1.1TB on PS5. That should be more than enough space for most.

I personally do not see a need to expand right now. But I never expanded my launch PS4 either.

@__jamiie That's because the upgrade we get from storage is super massive, from ps4 100 MB/s to ps5 7000 MB/s, it's way better than cpu and gpu upgrade.

Im still waiting to see how the people who rush out and get them asap get on.. I want to know how loud those PS5 fans get even with a heatsink before I even think about dropping money on these

Get ready for scalpers ... and probably huge price bump since this is going to be pretty hot item.
Just the way it is these days.

"sweeeet"

Mark Cerny is uber-nerd confirmed!

Does anyone find it funny that days after the story about the first officially supported drive that costs a buttload of money, the guy who designed the system posts that he's buying an older drive much lower price? Does nobody notice something not adding up here? Does marketing and legal know something the guy who designed the entire I/O doesn't?

I'm just going to wait a bit and see what prices do - IF I get one, it will be 2TB.

At the moment, SN850 and others are £400+. You can get the Samsung 980 Pro and an easy to install heatsink for about £350.

There will be greater savings if you're ready at the right time - may even have to wait until Black Friday / Christmas sales...

@TheDudeElDuderino Thanks Dude

I wonder how much WD paid him for this tweet.

You don't have to upgrade memory or worry about the $70 game price, if you can't get a ps5 👉😉. 👉😭

@TheDudeElDuderino Agreed.

The manufacturer-provided heatsink is probably the best you'll get for the money, but if you're willing to splash out you can do better. Similar to with CPU coolers on PC: the one that comes in the box with the processor will be fine in an average build, and will outperform most of the cheap junk you'll find on eBay, but will never be able to compete with the best from Zalman, Noctua, Coolermaster et al, because it's simply not economical for the manufacturer to compete.

^ this is also why the PS5 has a conservative amount of storage built in: it'll be fine for 80-95% of users, so it would be uneconomical to include more, as most people wouldn't pay the increased price point, and the rest can upgrade

@Milktastrophe 1$

@theheadofabroom Maybe its a stupid question but does a heatsink need cooling paste?

Must be nice to have a partner who likes games as much as you do

thank you genius Mark!

ADATA Gammix S70 2TB is only just over £300 on Amazon at the moment - just needs a shallower heatsink apparently, which can be had for less than £5.

I'll still be waiting for them DEALS though!

@Flaming_Kaiser it's not a stupid question at all, and the short answer is yes.

Whenever you have a thing that is to be cooled and a heatshink, the heatsink's rate of thermal absorption is generally limited by the surface area in contact between the two. On a microscopic level, you'll find that the surfaces of the two will never be perfectly flat, and so you want to introduce an interface material. The heatsink and the thing you're cooling would be clamped together for as much contact as possible, but by replacing the air that would sit between the two with thermal paste, you allow the thing being cooled to also transmit heat to the paste, which is able to pass it onto the heatsink. This still isn't as efficient as direct contact transfer, but it's many times better than with air. This is why you'll see extreme overclockers sanding and polishing the interface surfaces to a high gloss: to increase actual contact surface area.

I don't know about SSD heatsinks as I haven't built a system that needed them, but every CPU heatsink or water-cooling block I've come across has come with paste pre-applied, and I'd imagine that's likely the case here too. I wouldn't bother replacing the pre-applied stuff unless you've either a) bought a really cheap heatsink, or b) you're buying really good paste, like the top of the range Arctic Silver.

Bonus rambling: you generally want your heatsink to have a copper interface because that's the most efficient at wicking heat. Aluminium fins are generally considered just as good as copper for passive cooling, and can be cheaply manufactured, which is where you'll see a lot of 'bonded' heatsinks which use both metals. This is because aluminium can be extruded into complex shapes with little waste, which copper must be machined from a block, or bolted together from plates (bearing in mind that anywhere you have a mechanical join, you run into the contact surface area problem again). I'm not sure how relevant this all is to SSD heatsinks which appear to be fairly compact with few fins. Finally it's worth noting that copper has triple the density of aluminium, and so as a thermal reservoir can absorb three times the heat per degree of temperature it rises. If you're not carrying that heat away then eventually you'll overheat anyway, but this would allow copper to deal with longer periods where the heat carried away is less than that being generated. You can think of that as thermal buffering.

@mikeym Be careful, as ADATA have form when it comes to swapping out controllers or buffer ram for inferior quality parts which don't get the same performance.

@theheadofabroom - cheers, yes, I had read similar stories online when doing a bit more research.

Personally, I will probably go either Samsung, Sabrent or WD.

It will be interesting to see what this does to the NVME market as a whole. I've already got 2 in my main PC but quite 'old' / PCIe 3.0 (Corsair MP510 and some SK hynix PC601 thing that I got issued by my employers).

@theheadofabroom Thank you for the information so i think getting a SSD with heatsink on there will be the best idea i guess.

@Flaming_Kaiser No problem, it's certainly what I'd do. The OEM cooler should be fine, or at least good enough to prevent damage, and if we find out that it makes any difference in the real world, you can always splash out on a high-end heatsink later!

I was confused by the 'his & her's' thing...

He's going to hot swap two SSDs in the same PS5 or he has two separate PS5?

@GamerDad66 Maybe? Or one of them gets the onboard storage and the other gets the expansion?

@GoodGame So, right before the PS6?

@theheadofabroom Best comment I've read on this site in a while. Informative and on point.

@mikeym Shortages in components make that very unlikely but yeah, I don't see the need to rush out and upgrade. There really isn't enough PS5 high quality games out to warrant it, yet.

@GamerDad66 Hyperbole. I assume.

@tselliot Yep lol

@tselliot Cheers, you have no idea how many tangents I started to go down and then edited out. It's one of those topics I started to look into for practical reasons and then just got absorbed in how subtle and intricate it is for something most of us take for granted.

It's really a miracle anything works given how much knowledge it requires to make anything reliable.