Hacker News Reader

Overengineering 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.

Sony probably remembers how Microsoft Gaming division almost died from device failure en masse.. no one wants to refund 100K angry customers.

I guess this refers to the "Red Ring of Death"? IIRC, heating problems -> thermal shutdown?

Yep. Bought an Xbox 360 with warranty from GameStop and ended up cycling through ~10 of them before I gave up and quit gaming.

How good are GameStop about replacing stuff under their product replacement plan?

This 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.

I went through 3 before getting one that seems to have fixed the issue.

Red ring of death? Just throw it* in the oven!

* The motherboard, not the whole console.

Stick a couple pennies on it!

I revived a couple xboxs found in college trash piles this way back in ~2009.

You could also wrap the whole thing in a towel and run it for 2-3 hours (even on red-ringed mode) and the heat would actually reflow the solder in some cases. Source? My Xbox 360 experienced a RRoD that I resolved as a teenager with this "towel trick", and it still runs to this day.

The also remember the PS3's Yellow Light of Death.

It's true, the MS case was just more violent because they were trying to get into a new market.

Between capacitor plague and then RoHS solder that was a fking terrible few years to buy electronics

> If you've ever opened up a used console from Goodwill, all the evidence is there.

Hey, that's a really good way to get an idea of how your product is actually used! All the wear and tear is there, and for little money to study. Thats a really great idea.

My 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.

And poor cooling was the reason so many PS3s died. I personally had two separate units die due to heating issues.

That sucks. I still have my original "Phat" PS3 (though not a launch one, it doesn't do PS2 backwards compatibility) and it works well.

One 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.

Yea, 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.

I 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.

I have a PS5 pre-ordered and since it's backwards compatible with PS4 games I am hoping I can just put the PS4 Pro in a box and call it good. I may end up moving it to the basement on another tv at some point, but I think a bulk of my gaming will be on the PS5 going forward and we're about a month away from launch.

But good tip for anyone that may be waiting! I took my original PS4 launch day console apart and cleaned it all up and noticed an improvement, but I just used arctic silver.

Mine is clean as a whistle, but the paste seems to conduct heat less rather quickly. I’m not certain why. Liquid metal stays in place and seems to hold better, and conducts heat well over time.

I’m going to be gaming a lot more on mine, I’m not planning to get a new console for another 18–24 months when prices have come down and there are plenty of used games for sale.

This is my PS4 Pro, it's insane how loud it gets: https://youtu.be/chfZmEbUxco

Try the liquid metal along with cleaning it. Made a big difference for me.

Any recommendation for a specific liquid metal paste?

I bought some thermal grizzly on eBay but I suspect they’re all very similar. In any case it seems thermal grizzly is the high profile brand. The tubes are small (1g) bit you really don’t need much. I put probably a pinhead and a half on the die and maybe a pinhead on the cooler. Watch videos on how to apply it, it’s hard to spread in the beginning because it won’t “stick” to the surface but eventually you’re able to “paint” the whole contact area.

Be very careful because it’s electrically conductive. Or use conformal coating/nail polish around the die of you don’t trust yourself.

Thank you!

I would recommend not doing liquid metal. Buy a good paste instead.

Take a look: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-compariso... Difference between good paste and liquid metal is couple degrees. Between good paste and cheap paste much more.

I don't like the idea of liquid metal. Conductive liquid is the last substance I want in my electronic devices. Also, some metal alloys have rather unexpected properties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mExi4NuLn9Y

It would make sense to over-engineer the cooling because people are likely to shove the console into their entertainment system, under some dvd cases, with blocked airflow, clogged with pet dander, in the summer without air conditioning for 14 hour play sessions.

I suspect the shape is at least partly designed to prevent people from stacking things on top of the PS5.

Wow I never considered that. That’s quite clever and subtle solution if it is the case.

Oh reasonable. Maybe PS3 was designed for same purpose.

The PS4 is really loud even under optimal conditions. Nice and clean and free-flowing air? Still loud. Not a great experience.

They've also talked about how they've designed the system to run at a constant level of heat production/cooling capacity, so the fans never "ramp up"; the system is constantly cooling a roughly constant amount of heat and so they were able to design the console's cooling system around that.

It's a lot easier to optimize a system when you have roughly fixed inputs, and from what the Japanese YouTubers at the hands-on event said, it basically doesn't make enough noise to be distracting unless you're using it as a pillow.

I really like the variable-clock and constant-power setup they have for the console. Being able to adjust power consumption between the CPU and GPU could theoretically allow developers to prioritize one or the other in a game, especially since a lot of games tend to be bottlenecked in one direction or another.

The 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.

Maybe lead with 'The data/clock lines going to each memory chip need to be equidistant.' ;-)

Lots 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.

The 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).

> 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.

You 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.

While 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.

Oh 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.

It's in the video: https://youtu.be/CaAY-jAjm0w?t=165

I'm pretty sure it's PCIE4 and requires a minimum of 5k - 7K IOPS though so just any NVME won't do.

The 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.)

They show it pretty clearly in the video at the start of the teardown.

I'm wondering how that NVME will work. The big push of the PS5 was that those built-in SSDs push a huge amount of data with their custom storage controller, allowing loading of assets in read time during gameplay.

I'm guessing the NVME will be for storing some game assets it can swap out for less frequently played games; but that data would still need to be transferred back to the onboard SSD when the game is loaded back up?

The lead architect of the PS5 said that NVMe drives will need to be a bit faster than the built-in SSD to make up for the fact that they don't have the optimizations that Sony has for the built-in controller. Essentially only the highest performance PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives will be fast enough for the PS5.

cooling 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

I 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.

Yep, 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.

At 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.

Were 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?

grandparent poster here: I was playing digital version.

Yes 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.

You can plug your headset into the PS4 controller.

they 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.

I think you are confusing liquidmetal (a "super alloy") with liquid metal (a gallium alloy liquid at room temperatures).

Not 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.

You 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."

Ouch, that’s unfortunate. The aluminum PowerBooks were beautiful machines too; I can’t deny that I was lusting over them when they first released!

PS3: Died because of insufficient cooling

PS4: Noted for being very loud

PS5: Perhaps with sufficient cooling

PS3 cooling was 'insufficient' only if you were a dummy and stuffed it into a tight unventilated cabinet.

As a consumer device aimed at everybody, you kinda need to account for a large amount of dummies.

PS4 does get a bit of crap for being loud, so maybe trying real hard to make sure the PS5 is quiet.

If 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.

I 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.

> 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?

Yeah, 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.

I 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.

No 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.

The 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).