Sony has published a seven-minute teardown video of the PS5. The teardown gives us the best look at the PS5 so far, including all of its internal parts and how the sides are removable. Yasuhiro Ootori, head of Sony’s mechanical design for the PS5, leads the teardown in Japanese, noting that the entire rear of the PS5 is designed to exhaust air out of the console.
Sony is using a base on the PS5 that’s held in with a screw when it’s oriented vertically and clipped to the side of the console if you’re planning to use it horizontally. The white panels on either side of the console can be easily removed by lifting and sliding them off. This reveals the main cooling fan at the top of the PS5, which can draw in air from either side. Sony is also using two dust catchers which can be vacuumed out through two holes.
The teardown also gives us a first look at expandable storage through an M.2 slot that’s accessible once you remove the side panels. PS5 owners will be able to purchase their own PCIe 4.0 compatible drives to upgrade storage in the next-gen console.
The rest of Sony’s teardown video also reveals just how serviceable this console will be. It’s clear Sony has thoughtfully designed this to make reparability and serviceability easy. The Blu-ray drive can be easily removed, and even the processor, memory, and SSD sections are easy to access. The 350-watt power supply can also be removed easily.
The cooling fan Sony is using inside the PS5 is a large 120mm diameter, 45mm thick, double-sided air intake. Sony is also using a heatsink to help with cooling, with airflow that Sony says should “achieve the same performance as a vapor chamber.” The PS5 also uses liquid metal for cooling performance, which should also help cut down on the typical fan noise found on the PS4.
Sony says it has spent two years working on this liquid metal cooling, with various tests to ensure it’s a stable long-term solution. It’s a thermal conductor that sits between the SoC and heat sink and should help significantly with the cooling performance.
Early hands-on videos and impressions suggested that the console ran quiet and cool during the limited gameplay that Japanese publishers and YouTubers were able to experience recently.
Sony says it has spent five years designing and developing the PS5 and has focused on reducing noise levels and enhancing its cooling methods. That’s encouraging to hear as the previous PS4 Pro suffered from noise problems that Sony quietly addressed with updated models.
“We’ve also highlighted the mechanism in the video that we’ve incorporated into the PS5 console to make the operating sounds even quieter,” explains Masayasu Ito, head of hardware engineering and operation at Sony Interactive Entertainment. “After an extensive and complex trial and error process, we were pleased with the end result and I can not wait for our fans to get their hands on the PS5 console and ‘hear’ it for themselves.”
Sony’s PlayStation 5 console will go on sale for $499 ($399 for the Digital Edition) in the US on November 12th, with a launch in Europe and other parts of the world on November 19th.
