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Sony has finally given us a full, in-depth look at what's inside a PS5 in a new teardown video, and it's an elegant machine that seems built very much with the failings of the PS4 in mind. You can watch the full video below, or read on for everything we've learned about the silicone and metal guts of PlayStation's next-generation offering.
Let's start from the outside with the obvious point: it's massive, and bigger than a PS4. The teardown, performed by Sony Interactive Entertainment's VP of Mechanical Design Department, Yasuhiro Ootori, revealed some interesting elements about the console's size. Standing 104mm wide, 390mm high, and 260mm deep (thats 4.09 inches wide, 15.35 inches high, and 10.23 inches deep if you speak Imperial), it's a chunky machine for a home console. For reference, a PS4 Pro is 55mm x 327mm x 295mm.
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Ootori says that the size results in a “dramatic improvement in performance in terms of processing power and quietness”. It appears that the design ethos behind the PS5 has focused a lot on heat management.
On the front panel are two USB ports, a USB type-A port with hi-speed data transfer, and a USB type-C with SuperSpeed 10gbs transfer. On the rear are a further two USB type-A ports (both SuperSpeed 10gbs), a LAN port for networking, HDMI Out to link to your TV/display, and AC In for power. If you don't plan on using the LAN port, the console has Wi-Fi 6 support for wireless networking, and also Bluetooth 5.1 for connecting devices.
The sides of the console can be slid off by hand with no tools required, which reminds me a lot of tool-less entry PC cases. Those sides flair out along the sides of the console, as air intakes are on both sides of the machine, with air drawn by a 120mm diameter, 45mm thick dual-intake fan. Airflow is then exhausted out the back of the console, where vents cover basically every section of the backplate not dedicated to ports.
With the covers off, you can access two ports for the dust filters that run along the intakes. Ootori specifically notes that these ports can be used with a vacuum cleaner, which will allow users to easily clean the filters with a household vacuum cleaner. Again, another way to help keep heat under control.
With the side panels off, users can also access a metal plate, under which is a bay for an SSD drive, should you wish to expand your storage. This is an M.2 interface with the latest high-speed PCIe 4.0 rating, which is the same as those used in PCs, so standard off-the-shelf NVMe drives will work.
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That's all you can reach from beneath the side panels, but Ootori unscrewed the casing and showed off the guts of the machine, too. Inside is a one-piece motherboard fitted with a AMD SoC (system on a chip) that contains the x86-64-AMD Ryzen Zen 2 CPU and RDNA-2 Radeon graphics processor. On the rear of the board is also eight units of GDDR6 system memory, clocking in at 16GB overall at 448GB/s. For more on the nitty gritty, see our complete PS5 specs page.
The SSD is also soldered directly onto the motherboard, with its chips surrounding the custom SSD controller module, which allows for the fast 5.5GB/s raw transfer speeds.
Running almost the entire length of the console is a huge heatsink. It's a classic finned design with heat pipes, but Ootori claims that because of the shape and airflow design, it actually functions with the same performance as a vapor chamber. Between the chipset and the heatsink is a layer of liquid metal, which is used instead of a standard thermal paste. Ootori says that liquid metal has had to be used because the chipset runs at a very high clock rate within a very small die, and so had very high thermal density which needed to be dealt with by an enhanced thermal conductor.
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The whole thing is powered by a 350W power supply, which sits in the bottom corner of the unit. Above it is the UHD blu-ray player, which is housed in a sheet metal shroud and insulated by two layers to reduce noise and vibration.
Finally, the entire thing can be used horizontally or vertically. A stand comes in the box, and can be easily attached with a single slot-head screw. The screw is only needed in the vertical position; if you use it horizontally, the screw can be stored in a little compartment in the base, and there's a plastic plug to put in the screw-hole that no longer has a screw in it.
PS5 will cost US$499 / £449 / AU$750 for the full edition, and US$399 / £359 / AU$600 for the digital edition. It will arrive on November 12 in the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea and November 19 in all other territories.
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Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.