If, like me, you sit in the quaint overlap of the IKEA/PlayStation 5 fandom Venn diagram, well Sony has released the video for you, with the company releasing a complete teardown video of its upcoming console. Featuring just a man, some screwdrivers, and the big boi PlayStation 5, the video goes into detail regarding the inner workings of the console, and a few of the nifty tricks it has up its sleeve.
The first thing you’ll notice in the video is that the console is big. Really fucking big. To be exact, it is one Yasuhiro Ootori’s (the aforementioned man in the video) chest tall. The size of the console comes down to cooling, with the case housing a large 120mm diameter, 45mm thick, double-sided air intake and massive heat sink that performs at the same level as a vapour chamber. Cooling will also be aided by a liquid metal thermal conductor which will keep the CPU and running GPU cool. The PlayStation 5’s components and size will help make the console quieter, which was a massive issue for the jet-engine that is the Playstation 4. Noise reduction is also aided by additional shielding added to noisier components, such as the Blu-Ray drive.
The entire rear side of the console will act as an exhaust port, with safe vacuum dust-ports built into the side, just behind the side panels, to ensure ease of cleaning. Keeping your console dust-free goes a long way to keep it cool and quiet, so it is great to see Sony making that process even easier. The side panels can be easily removed, raising my hopes of custom panels in future. Maybe Sony won’t release them for some time, but I am sure someone with a 3D printer is going to make a killing selling custom covers on Etsy.
The part of the teardown that I really was not expecting is the feat of engineering that is the console stand. A console of such size and with such a unique side profile requires quite an impressive stand, which it looks like Sony has nailed.
To stand the console vertically, a screw is inserted into the base to keep the chonky console as sturdy as possible. When laying the console on its side, the screw is removed and hidden in a magnetized chamber within the stand, and replaced with a small plastic pin to cover the screw-hole. The stand is then twisted to cover the chamber, and the latched on to the side of the console. Pretty ingenious, I reckon!
The teardown also reveals a few of the technical aspects of the rig, with the video showing off the Wi-Fi 6 wireless antenna (aka 802.11ax) which supports Bluetooth 5.1 (max transfer speed of 9.6Gbit/s) and 825 GB module. The SSD is soldered into the board itself, but a separate M.2 2230/2242/2280 PCIe 4.0 slot will be available for secondary expansion. Look, I have no idea what any of that technical jargon means, but Keelan says it is good.
The PlayStation 5 will launch in Australia on November 12.