PS5, the teardown step by step
The generous dimensions of PlayStation 5 end up being confirmed once again in the video, but perhaps no one expected to discover that the bulk of the internal surface is occupied by the mechanisms responsible for extracting heat, characterized by a huge radiator and a fan from 120 mm in diameter and 45 mm thick.
Support
The first revelation in the PS5 teardown comes from the black support at the base of the console, necessary to position it both vertically and horizontally . The mechanism is not simply interlocking: to move to horizontal positioning you need to use a screwdriver with which to extract a screw, which is then hooked into a small compartment located in the lower part of the support.From the same compartment you can he takes out a tiny plug that covers the hole left by the screw. At that point the circular support is made to slide, until it clicks, to hide the compartment just mentioned. It is therefore possible to attach it to the back of the PlayStation 5, this time through an interlocking system, to find a place like a foot under the console.
Panels
There has been a lot of talk in recent months about how the PS5 side panels could be easily removed and replaced with any different versions, so as to revolutionize the design of the console. Well, the teardown confirmed this possibility, showing how simple it is to disassemble the two large white "wings" of the next-gen Sony platform, which detach by applying a trivial pressure.Once exposed the central body of the machine, completely black, you can see the grids through which the air is sucked in, the fan housing and two slits connected to a dust collection system : to clean the system it will be enough to vacuum these holes, therefore very immediately.
Expansion slot
As already known, PS5 allows you to expand the internal memory, equal to 825 GB, by connecting NVMe M.2 SSD drives with PCI Express 4.0 interface that are compatible with the system. We are therefore not talking about proprietary cards, but about standard modules that can be mounted in four different formats: 2280, 2260, 2242 and 2230.The expansion slot was shown on video, revealing a rather access fast and surprisingly simple, if we consider the compatibility with normal M.2 NVMe SSDs. At the moment, the prices of these components are more or less prohibitive, but they have already undergone significant reductions in recent times and will continue to fall even more so now that they can count on the support of the Sony console.
System dissipation
We come to the key element of the PS5 teardown, namely the large dissipation system designed by Sony engineers to allow the console to efficiently and silently extract the heat produced by the internal components. A single 120mm diameter and 45mm thick fan, which occupies the entire width of the system, lets in fresh air through the grilles on both sides and carries it to the radiator, and then lets out the hot air from the back of the machine.Only the fan housing takes up almost a third of the length of the PlayStation 5, and this provides a first indication of how much the company has invested, also and above all from the point of view volumetric, on a dissipation system that was able not only to keep the operating temperatures of the console stable, but also to carry out its work silently, using low rotation speeds.
The motherboard is located in the lower part of the chassis. We will talk about the specific components in a moment, but it is certainly worth noting the original solution adopted in place of the traditional thermal paste: a layer of liquid metal that absorbs heat from the processor and transmits it to the heatsink, adapting its consistency according to of the operating temperature and thus always ensuring stable performance.
Another fundamental element for the PS5 cooling is hidden under the motherboard, namely a huge metal radiator, equipped with a heatpipe, made with this specific shape because could offer the same dissipating performance as a steam chamber. The radiator absorbs the heat emanating from the SoC and is cooled by the air flow which then vents towards the rear.
Disc player
Among the various confirmations of the PS5 teardown we also find the fact that the Ultra HD Blu-Ray disc player has been practically added to an already finished design, a sort of external body isolated from everything else, equipped with a shell that serves to dampen vibrations and ensure accurate and reliable data reading.Processor and GPU
Let's go back to the motherboard, which seems to be larger than a Mini ITX but houses, as we know, an SoC composed of processor, GPU and a total of 16 GB of GDDR6 RAM running at a speed of 448 GB / s. On the motherboard there is also the 825 GB SSD, more secluded than the other chips.The CPU is an AMD Ryzen with Zen 2 architecture, eight cores and sixteen threads, and runs at a maximum frequency of 3 , 5 Ghz. As for the GPU, it is a custom AMD Radeon based on RDNA 2 architecture, with a maximum frequency of 2.23 GHz and a power of 10.3 TFLOPS.
Power supply
The PS5 power supply is internal, has a power of 350 W and boasts an "L" shape that allows it to be positioned without problems on the bottom of the console, similar to what happens for notebooks. It has two small grids for the passage of air, but we do not know exactly how it is cooled.General sensations
The PS5 teardown was long awaited and from the in-depth video made by Sony arrive important confirmations. This explains, in particular, the generous dimensions of the console, largely used to equip a large and powerful dissipation system, which can keep temperatures stable and at the same time guarantee a certain silence.In the end even the controversial design of the PlayStation 5, therefore, has its own reason and a couple of interesting aces up its sleeve, such as the easily removable side panels, which could create a customized spare parts market to revolutionize the aesthetics of the platform, and compatibility with different models of NVMe M.2 SSD with which to expand the system memory.
