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So after the teardown, my biggest takeaway is that at least 90% of the size of this chunky piece of hardware is because of cooling. The entire system fits on a
by jacurtis 6y ago
So after the teardown, my biggest takeaway is that at least 90% of the size of this chunky piece of hardware is because of cooling. The entire system fits on a single PCB board. The rest of the size of the internals are a massive cooling fan (about 30% of the overall console size) and a huge full-height-full-length heatsink.
I am assuming that the radial layout of the SSDs (which are hard soldered btw, so not user replaceable/upgradable like past models) and the RAM, must be for cooling purposes as well.
Overall the PCB is not very condense. Everything is quite spread out on it... again I assume for cooling. It looks like cooling is either a major concern for this device, or that Sony over-engineered its cooling in order to prevent problems.
(Edit: oh in my off the cuff estimation, I am also attributing the empty space in the case to cooling as well, since that is an intentional design choice by Sony and contributes to its airflow capability and cooling capability).
- gbil 6y agocooling is a big thing on consoles as the engineers need to account for a life in a not well cooled location (eg. cabinet, tv stand etc. Many consoles in the recent past has thermal issues From that point of view over-engineering is the way to go for sure. I mean they used liquid metal, that is something you don't even see in normal PCs/laptops EDIT: cooling (fan) noise also is something they seem to have tackled with this design
- vmception 6y agoI was playing The Last of Us 2 on my version 1 PS4 and it was blowing like crazy inside my cabinet! I opened the door out of concern In classic Google fashion I found several threads saying the same thing I want to guess that the end of life graphics pushed the system that hard, but its probably just bad coding somewhere.
- jacurtis 6y agoYep, I too played Last of Us 2 on my v1-launch edition PS4 and I wasn't sure the console was going to survive to the end of the game. I was seriously concerned for the console's health. God of War is another game that put that console to its breaking point. A few times dropping down to what was probably 15-20fps with fans on at max-speed. It actually is bad enough that I will limit gaming sessions out of concern for the hardware. Which is also probably better for me and my personal life.
- vmception 6y agoAt least in a God of War they yell everything, on Last of Us 2 I could barely hear anyone over the fan Guess I will wait a while before getting PS5, means I also have to wait on Cyberpunk 2077. I heard they’ll CD Projekt will upgrade ps4 version purchasers for free but I dont trust their ability to do that in an uncomplicated way.
- 101008 6y agoWere you playing the disc version? I think I have the original PS4 too and I didnt hear anything, but I played the digital version so maybe that's the reason?
- vmception 6y agograndparent poster here: I was playing digital version.
- jacurtis 6y agoYes the noise is a big deal. Hopefully with the extra airflow accounted for in the console design and the massive fan, it should mean that it doesn't need to run full bore all the time and can help keep it quiet. I have an original PS4 (bought it at launch, haven't needed to replace it) and that thing runs fans at full tilt with any modern PS4 game and it gets loud enough to really ruin the experience. My PC also makes a lot of fan noise, but since I play with a headset at the PC, I don't hear it. But with the PS4, I am playing in the living room with speakers, so it matters a lot more.
- Narishma 6y agoYou can plug your headset into the PS4 controller.
- reaperducer 6y agothey used liquid metal, that is something you don't even see in normal PCs/laptops FWIW, one of the old 17" MacBook Pros had this. I think it was a G4. Didn't help once you fired up Virtual PC.
- formerly_proven 6y agoI think you are confusing liquidmetal (a "super alloy") with liquid metal (a gallium alloy liquid at room temperatures).
- arm 6y agoNot the most important correction, but if it had a G4 processor, that would be a PowerBook G4 (or iBook G4). Apple didn’t call their laptops MacBooks until they switched over to Intel.
- reaperducer 6y agoYou are correct, now that I think about it. I loved that machine. Passed it down to my mother who destroyed it in a week by dumping coffee on it. "No big whoop. I bet you do it all the time."
- arm 6y agoOuch, that’s unfortunate. The aluminum PowerBooks were beautiful machines too; I can’t deny that I was lusting over them when they first released!
- akmarinov 6y agoWhile not user replaceable, you can still stick in a NVME M2 SSD in there, so not a big deal imo, unless the soldered SSD fails.
- jacurtis 6y agoOh that is good to know. I wasn't aware that they supported NVME M2 SSDs. That actually is a really thoughtful addition that I wouldn't have expected.
- adamtulinius 6y agoIt's in the video: https://youtu.be/CaAY-jAjm0w?t=165 https://youtu.be/CaAY-jAjm0w?t=165
- ganoushoreilly 6y agoI'm pretty sure it's PCIE4 and requires a minimum of 5k - 7K IOPS though so just any NVME won't do.
- wtallis 6y agoThe performance requirement for third-party SSDs has been stated in terms of read throughput, where the built-in PS5 SSD provides about 5.5GB/s and third party SSDs may need to be a bit faster to provide the same QoS. This is referring to sequential read speeds, generally measured with 128kB or larger IO sizes. When SSD performance is stated in terms of IOPS, that's usually referring to small block sizes (4kB) and random IO rather than sequential. (Strictly speaking, the access pattern that matters most for games will probably be something like 128kB random reads, so the attained throughput when a game is streaming in chunks of partially-resident textures on the fly is likely to be somewhat lower than purely sequential reads.)
- Narishma 6y agoThey show it pretty clearly in the video at the start of the teardown.
- 6y ago
- fwsgonzo 6y agoI hope it's over-engineered. That leaves room for experimentation, takes care of random heat-related issues. I really like how easy it is to take the fan out. I bet we can get special fans soon after release.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoYeah, the main hardware / motherboard looks like it's basically a laptop PCB, it's everything around it that takes up the space. I'm confident we'll see a revision in a few years that takes off at least a third of the size, probably more. This will mainly depend on whether the chips used become more thermally efficient though.
- lmilcin 6y agoYou would be surprised to know that most of the size of components is so that energy can be effectively transferred out of them. The entire machine could be the size of your phone (plus connectors) if not for the power it consumes.
- mastax 6y agoThe radial layout of memories is primarily to ease PCB routing. The data/clock lines going to each memory chip need to be equidistant which is much easier when the chips are equidistant. The GDDR6 memories are relatively far from the CPU which may be for cooling.
- djmips 6y agoMaybe lead with 'The data/clock lines going to each memory chip need to be equidistant.' ;-)
- londons_explore 6y agoLots of laptop makers manage this with a much smaller PCB. I'd guess simply not much effort went into making the PCB small and cheap. I would guess there will be a follow-up revision of the PS5 with all hardware much cheaper. That model will be the mass market one, and the profit maker for Sony.
- baybal2 6y ago> Overall the PCB is not very condense. Everything is quite spread out on it... again I assume for cooling. It looks like cooling is either a major concern for this device, or that Sony over-engineered its cooling in order to prevent problems. It's heatsink, and PSU would've still pushed the outline past the PCB dimensions, so why not to go for a bigger, lower layer count, easier to route, and cheaper PCB?
- hajile 6y agoThe Xbox Series X heatsink in their teardown looks to be less than half the size. I'm guessing the larger heatsink is to make sure the console survives long enough to make up for the massive losses this generation. It's possible that they need a larger heatsink due to overclocks. Maybe they plan to reuse the same system with an upgraded "pro" chip and wanted to save design and tooling costs. Maybe it's just the normal conservative design choice common in Japanese companies. Some interesting room to conjecture. EDIT: 315w for xbox vs 350w for PS4 isn't that big of a difference. In any case, massive graphics cards like the GTX480 or those old AMD dual 4xxx/5xxx cooled more than 350w with a much smaller heatsink (though in a larger case with better airflow -- though not all of that power goes just to the CPU/GPU in the consoles).
- formerly_proven 6y ago> EDIT: 315w for xbox vs 350w for PS4 isn't that big of a difference. In any case, massive graphics cards like the GTX480 or those old AMD dual 4xxx/5xxx cooled more than 350w with a much smaller heatsink (though in a larger case with better airflow -- though not all of that power goes just to the CPU/GPU in the consoles). Those suckers were deafening though.
- selykg 6y agoMy guess is that they're over engineering the cooling because PS4's have terrible fan noise when under heavy load. It's not uncommon for my PS4 Pro to ramp up the fans to the point I get distracted by it over the audio from a game. So if this over engineering ends up causing a quiet game system then this is a win in my book.
- whymauri 6y agoAnd poor cooling was the reason so many PS3s died. I personally had two separate units die due to heating issues.
- selykg 6y agoThat sucks. I still have my original "Phat" PS3 (though not a launch one, it doesn't do PS2 backwards compatibility) and it works well.
- ManBlanket 6y agoOne of the first things mentioned was the reduced noise due to improved cooling. I think you're echoing the most common criticism of its predecessor.
- selykg 6y agoYea, I have a couple PS4s. A launch day model and a PS4 Pro. Both sound like harrier jets taking off when they're under load. I don't think it's uncommon and something I've heard others mention a well. I'm just looking forward to a quiet running game system. I don't much care how big it is, which is a common complaint, as long as it runs quiet. My only other really big complaint about the PS4 is how terrible the battery life is on the DS4 controllers. I really hope that's also resolved with PS5 and it's new controller.
- ornornor 6y agoI couldn’t tolerate my ps4 pro noise so I had to repaste it every couple of months (or weeks if I played a lot). I even tried graphite pads (didn’t work at all for me). The only thing that worked is liquid metal. I suspect it’s because it’s not susceptible to the pump out effect from repeated heating and cooling (and expansion contraction of the cooler). Since the cooler has a copper plate, liquid metal works on it (it melts aluminum so wouldn’t work on the normal PS4) If you haven’t already, you should try applying liquid metal to the APU die. It’s night and day for me, keeps the console whisper quiet.
- bengale 6y agoPS4 does get a bit of crap for being loud, so maybe trying real hard to make sure the PS5 is quiet.
- reaperducer 6y agoOverengineering for cooling is always a good idea for these kinds of devices. The big gamers will keep it in a nice place with lots of ventilation. But the average box will end up stuffed between two other hot pieces of electronics, or on a carpet, or in a cabinet, or covered in thick layers of dust and cigarette smoke, or all of the above. If you've ever opened up a used console from Goodwill, all the evidence is there. The people who do these things to their machines are also the first, and the loudest, on social media saying it's an unreliable piece of crap.
- agumonkey 6y agoSony probably remembers how Microsoft Gaming division almost died from device failure en masse.. no one wants to refund 100K angry customers.
- retSava 6y agoI guess this refers to the "Red Ring of Death"? IIRC, heating problems -> thermal shutdown?
- mikeyouse 6y agoYep. Bought an Xbox 360 with warranty from GameStop and ended up cycling through ~10 of them before I gave up and quit gaming.
- justin66 6y agoHow good are GameStop about replacing stuff under their product replacement plan?
- mikeyouse 6y agoThis was probably 10 years ago - but they were amazing, you could tell whoever was behind the counter didn't care at all - they just plugged it in to verify the RROD and then swapped it out. No idea if that's the case still.
- balls187 6y agoThe PS4Pro was also a single pcb as well (I recently took mine apart to replace the OEM fan with a much much much quieter one).
- pvarangot 6y agoIf you count the air on a non-watercooled gaming PC it comes to around 85% or 90% of volume used for cooling too. If you pack a watercooled PC as tight as possible including the radiators it's maybe 70% of volume dedicated to cooling. This things run for hours and hours, it's hard to understand if you just use your computer to do cloud things or maybe compile something every once in a while. I'm into photography and I've been learning Ableton and my Mac wasn't doing it anymore, after an hour the fans go super loud and the CPU underclocks and Lightroom or Photoshop become super slow and Ableton starts clicking. I got a Thinkpad T where like 50% of my laptop is now cooling and I can work on it for hours and everything runs fine.
- spike021 6y agoI don't mind at all. Even the PS4, IMO, was a massive step up in cooling from the PS3 generation. During the PS3 generation, I went through five or six consoles and those were a mix of the different sub types (original, slim, etc.) due to overheating issues that would cause hardware failure. I've had my basically launch PS4 almost since it came out now and no heat issues whatsoever. If the PS5 evolves even further past that, at the cost of more components/design tradeoffs then I'll take it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- formerly_proven 6y agoPS3: Died because of insufficient cooling PS4: Noted for being very loud PS5: Perhaps with sufficient cooling
- TwoBit 6y agoPS3 cooling was 'insufficient' only if you were a dummy and stuffed it into a tight unventilated cabinet.
- JauntyHatAngle 6y agoAs a consumer device aimed at everybody, you kinda need to account for a large amount of dummies.
- mmm_grayons 6y agoNo wonder it runs so cool. That thing is an absolute unit of a box. It does give off that "premium product" feel, though, even to someone who's never owned a console and probably won't buy one. The fact that the stand has a screw holder, rotates closed, and comes with a plug for the whole shows a lot of thought.