It was intentionally negative — Evans is the guy discovering the smaller heatsink; not Sony PR.
The full quote is “I don’t think there’s any argument that this is a worse console, at least for thermals and for cooling,” says Evans. “As far as I’m concerned I’d rather have a launch PS5.”
> with rear exhaust temperatures around 3 to 5 degrees higher
Is that C or F? I'm going to assume Fahrenheit. Also, is that bad? In other words, did they measure the rest of the unit to see if it was hotter or cooler? Maybe they've directed more heat to the exhaust. Which is the whole point, after all.
In terms of if it's bad? shrug. With a smaller heat sink, the chips are almost certainly going to be hotter (dunno how much.. at least 3-5 degrees, maybe up to 10?).
Does that matter? Tech youtubers love to emphasize cooling - which is fair, I think it's important, but I also think it's overdone.
From the end-user standpoint, the question is does this meaningfully increase the rate that their unit thermal throttles (the PS5 uses boost just like modern laptops/PCs... the xbox and ps4 did not) in like... 95 (or whatever threshold) percentile shitty (so like stuffed in a cabinet with air flow being impinged) environments.
Because of boost variability, it's gonna be kinda annoying to do true side by side performance comparisons. At the very least, you'd need to swap cooling solutions on the same silicon. No idea how feasible that is with the PS5 design.
I think for the end user the primary concern is not performance, but the potential fan noise.
If the performance goes up or down, end users might not even notice, but if the fan is constantly kicking in and being too loud too often, more people will be concerned.
Agreed, this would be the main concern, since it's one the things people hated about the PS4 and PS4 Pro (being really loud). I don't think Sony would want a regression there either.
That's fair. I think the fan noise consideration is interesting because it's possible (depending on fan and load characteristics) to run the fan more (as in % duty on at "high" speed) and not meaningfully effect the perception enjoyment since it's often the fan noise changing (not the fan noise itself... though obviously this depends on how obnoxious the fan noise) that is annoying, not the fan noise itself.
I don't own any of these consoles, so I can't really say first hand, but for my Xbox One (the og one), I just know that I notice when the fans kick in... and then I just get absorbed into the game (and game noise).
In the brief testing Austin Evans did in his YouTube video comparing the two, the new model was actually a touch quieter and a few degrees warmer. Of course that may not hold in all scenarios but it's something to note.
The final step missing is checking the framerates - those systems use dynamic clocks and can potentially throttle. Sony claims "PS5 consoles process the same workloads with the same performance level in any environment, no matter what the ambient temperature may be", but you never know until you test, like PS3 "random" number generator.
Almost all laptop performance is constrained by heat, heat makes user's palm hot, and its fan must be near the user. So it's fair to focus on heat for laptop.
But gaming console is designed to not to thermal throttled and no boost (or little boost), and console is some feet away from user, so the heat importance is different.
It's centigrade. The video does all measurements in metric (weight in grams too). Anyway it's pretty common for consumer electronics people to talk in centigrade.
> Anyway it's pretty common for consumer electronics people to talk in centigrade
It's common for people to talk in centigrade. Fahrenheit is only used in the US, some dependencies and similar (like Liberia), so the vast majority of people on Earth talk in C.
People more experienced say measuring exhaust temperature is not enough to determine if it's cooling better or worse, measurements need to be made internally.
Thanks for that, I was thinking down that route. I just had a laptop where chip and heatsink had parted. The air coming out was not that hot, but you could have fried an egg on the nearby part of the case.
In theory it could be good thing for more heat to come out of the back with the same SoC - it means more heat is being transferred to the air... As long as the running thermals look the same this would be an improvement.
A reason for this could be better air modelling, increased surface area of the heat sink or longer contact time with the heat sink before being fanned out.
It's worth waiting for some proper testing before deciding if it is better or not.
Doesn't this depend significantly on ambient temperature? Running the console in the summer without AC could make the components run at yet-higher temperature, right?
I'm not familiar with how quickly CPU (and similar components) deteriorate under much higher temperature.
Yes, higher exhaust temperature is not a direct indicator. For the same airflow, higher exhaust temperature suggests more energy being carried away, which can reduce chip temp, all else being the same. If the airflow was reduced, but the heat pipe improved, it could still be that chip temp stayed the same.
Presumably a 5nm 'slim' version is just 1-2 years away, the PS4 'Slim' was released in 2016 on 16nm, which is the same timeframe as 16nm GPUs were released.
Yeah, this generation of consoles are much more power hungry than their predecessors (you can just see that in their designs). PS5 draws like ~220W from the wall, Series X draws like 200+. The 360 draws like ~120W.
The 360 also has a 32th of the memory and a 50th of the graphical performance. If you prioritize power draw over performance you can always continue using the old consoles.
About 12 years ago I would use a lava lamp screen saver on my Linux machine. Out of curiosity, I measured the power draw of my computer idling with a blank screen and with the lava lamp animation. The animation was drawing something like 30 watts whereas a physical lava lamp uses a 25 watt bulb.
That's true but the Series X has a turbine design similar to the trashcan Mac Pro where air is pulled through a heatsink block that makes contact with multiple components.
It seems much more effective at removing heat per unit of heatsink mass than the large flat heatsink+heatpipe design of the PS5.
Consoles have design lifetimes, and thermals are part of the computation that helps you figure out if your components are going to last as long as the warranty. Obviously, if you run a chip hot, its service life will be reduced.
So companies develop models that tell them how long things like the SOC (main chip with CPU, etc.) will last for a given temperature and use frequency, and whether or not they've got a 1-year design on their hands, or one that will last 20 years.
The model improves as you gain experience with manufacturing, customer issues, and get more testing than you could do before launch. Making the systems too beefy can be expensive, and saving pennies really matters when you're making millions of units.
So I imagine that the folks at Sony determined they could get away with a smaller heatsink and still have an acceptable fleet failure rate, probably a year or two out from the posted warranty.
Starting with the original PlayStation in 1994, nevermind all of the other hardware Sony makes since way before that, they just might have a bit more experience making consoles than Microsoft did in 2010 with the 360. (though to be fair, the original Xbox was released in 2001.)
I can't get a source for this right now, but I remember having a very intriguing conversation about heat issues and the xbox 360 years ago.
I was talking to an old colleague of mine that was an electronics engineer, and apparently, the issue with the xbox 360 was that the heat inside the case made the solder a bit more softer than expected. This would not be an issue for a horizontally positioned xbox 360, but when placed on it's side (which a lot of people did), this caused extremely slow shifting of certain components on the motherboard towards the direction of gravity. After (for most people) a few years, certain components would shift enough to not have proper contact with the board.
I was offered the analogy of the long-standing pitch viscocity experiment - everything is technically a liquid, just to wildly different degrees.
Not sure if this is true though, it was many years ago!
Yes this was absolutely true. I used to repair these systems when they got the dreaded red ring of death. Microsoft used inferior solder, and coupled this with a poorly designed heatsink mounting bracket. The heatsink mounting bracket on the back of the motherboard was bowed by design, and would pull back on the corners of the CPU, while a middle contact point would press up on the center of the CPU socket. Once heated, this caused the motherboard to flex directly under the CPU, and this stress would pop the ball grid array solder points under the CPU.
The trick was to place a stack of nylon bushings at each corner of the CPU, to take up the free space after removing the bracket. This removed the stress from under the CPU and would usually bring the system back to life for another eight months or so.
The position in which you placed the console was a separate issue that caused the same failure. The stress from the mounting bracket was a bigger factor.
I tried looking for a good visual example and this article describes the issue, and fix, pretty well.
The fix would only last so long because once a ball grid array looses connections there is no real fix. It takes very special equipment to create those connections in the first place.
If you search "ball grid array soldering" on YouTube you'll see what I'm talking about. They're a real pain to try to fix once broken.
I remember seeing repair videos where people would fix it by taping or gluing (can't remember) a penny to the motherboard in a particular spot, so this checks out well enough
When the 360 was in its preproduction phase Microsoft used Lead based solder. It was what the industry at that time was using. Microsoft didn't notice a problem regarding heat in these units simply because lead based solder is much kinder to heat cycles.
EU at this time put a deadline to the end of use for lead based solder, so the move to leadfree solder was done right before moving to mass manufacturing. The poor cooling solution on the 360 compared to its heat output didn't do the system justice. The PCB would flex as it would not be heated evenly.
After Die shrinks and manufacturing revisions, more mature lead free solder also used. The Jasper units were pretty much tanks, and the cooling solution was oversized as they were the same as before with the much hotter and power demanding lager die first gen chips.
Video Cards from the era of the launch 360 are notoriously unreliable for the same reasons. Heat cycles were a death wish, luckily for videocards they normally had a cool down period after gaming idling at a desktop. While the 360 would commonly go from 100% load term load to off.
Saving weight probably saves some money in transport, materials and assembly. If this saving is made to offset raising component prices all the better. Once a homebrew becomes available models with a bigger cooler might be worth more though.
I presume they are cost cutting where they can as material prices have been very high recently. The heat sink seems like a likely candidate where they can save money.
I remember a similar thing with the original PS/3 vs follow-up revisions. The fan on that original was killer--so large, slow and quiet, dangerously sharp edges too (does that help with noise?).
I will be skipping this generation. Not that it matters anyway, these consoles are impossible to find and buy, at least this will continue to be the case well into 2022.
OP removed their post. The comment section is a slaughter, with people calling shenanigans. I'd agree with the skeptics, I can't imagine what inside the console would blow up like that. The PSU is the most likely culprit, but it won't do anywhere near that kind of damage. Look at GamersNexus overloading a 750 watt PC PSU, vastly more chunky than an Xbox Series X pulling something like 170 watts at most: https://youtu.be/7JmPUr-BeEM A pop and a fizz but nothing that would do more than startle someone and maybe, in an absolute worst-case scenario set fire to some accumulated cat hair.
Shrinking PlayStation is tradition for Sony, but I believe they mostly did when their chips are also shrunk. Possibly they found that current cooling solution is a bit overkill. Personally I prefer overkill.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 127 ms ] threadWorst quote they coulda pulled. Literally sends the opposite message than the one its meant to convey.
Unless im even worse at english than i thought.
The full quote is “I don’t think there’s any argument that this is a worse console, at least for thermals and for cooling,” says Evans. “As far as I’m concerned I’d rather have a launch PS5.”
“There’s no debate” as in “it’s so obvious, there’s no one on the other side debating that it is not true”
Edit: wrote his name wrong.
Is that C or F? I'm going to assume Fahrenheit. Also, is that bad? In other words, did they measure the rest of the unit to see if it was hotter or cooler? Maybe they've directed more heat to the exhaust. Which is the whole point, after all.
In terms of if it's bad? shrug. With a smaller heat sink, the chips are almost certainly going to be hotter (dunno how much.. at least 3-5 degrees, maybe up to 10?).
Does that matter? Tech youtubers love to emphasize cooling - which is fair, I think it's important, but I also think it's overdone.
From the end-user standpoint, the question is does this meaningfully increase the rate that their unit thermal throttles (the PS5 uses boost just like modern laptops/PCs... the xbox and ps4 did not) in like... 95 (or whatever threshold) percentile shitty (so like stuffed in a cabinet with air flow being impinged) environments.
Because of boost variability, it's gonna be kinda annoying to do true side by side performance comparisons. At the very least, you'd need to swap cooling solutions on the same silicon. No idea how feasible that is with the PS5 design.
If the performance goes up or down, end users might not even notice, but if the fan is constantly kicking in and being too loud too often, more people will be concerned.
I don't own any of these consoles, so I can't really say first hand, but for my Xbox One (the og one), I just know that I notice when the fans kick in... and then I just get absorbed into the game (and game noise).
https://sciencenotes.org/why-there-is-no-degree-in-kelvin-te...
But gaming console is designed to not to thermal throttled and no boost (or little boost), and console is some feet away from user, so the heat importance is different.
It's common for people to talk in centigrade. Fahrenheit is only used in the US, some dependencies and similar (like Liberia), so the vast majority of people on Earth talk in C.
A reason for this could be better air modelling, increased surface area of the heat sink or longer contact time with the heat sink before being fanned out.
It's worth waiting for some proper testing before deciding if it is better or not.
I'm not familiar with how quickly CPU (and similar components) deteriorate under much higher temperature.
All in all I think it's the worst designed console I've ever had.
The curvy top makes controllers slide off while they're charging so I had to put a drawer liner on top.
The white plastic overhang seems delicate, I have no idea how I'd ever pack the thing up without breaking it.
And when mounted horizontally, the stand falls off every time I move the console. What's wrong with built in feet?
About 12 years ago I would use a lava lamp screen saver on my Linux machine. Out of curiosity, I measured the power draw of my computer idling with a blank screen and with the lava lamp animation. The animation was drawing something like 30 watts whereas a physical lava lamp uses a 25 watt bulb.
It seems much more effective at removing heat per unit of heatsink mass than the large flat heatsink+heatpipe design of the PS5.
It's not enclosed, the back is open and separated from the wall by about 5 inches.
Which is why it's all the more alarming that they've made the cooling system in the PS5 even worse.
So companies develop models that tell them how long things like the SOC (main chip with CPU, etc.) will last for a given temperature and use frequency, and whether or not they've got a 1-year design on their hands, or one that will last 20 years.
The model improves as you gain experience with manufacturing, customer issues, and get more testing than you could do before launch. Making the systems too beefy can be expensive, and saving pennies really matters when you're making millions of units.
So I imagine that the folks at Sony determined they could get away with a smaller heatsink and still have an acceptable fleet failure rate, probably a year or two out from the posted warranty.
I was talking to an old colleague of mine that was an electronics engineer, and apparently, the issue with the xbox 360 was that the heat inside the case made the solder a bit more softer than expected. This would not be an issue for a horizontally positioned xbox 360, but when placed on it's side (which a lot of people did), this caused extremely slow shifting of certain components on the motherboard towards the direction of gravity. After (for most people) a few years, certain components would shift enough to not have proper contact with the board.
I was offered the analogy of the long-standing pitch viscocity experiment - everything is technically a liquid, just to wildly different degrees.
Not sure if this is true though, it was many years ago!
Lucky you. I can barely remember conversations I had in the mid nineteenth century.
The trick was to place a stack of nylon bushings at each corner of the CPU, to take up the free space after removing the bracket. This removed the stress from under the CPU and would usually bring the system back to life for another eight months or so.
This would mean no more stress.
I'm intruiged as to why it would only work for eight months, why wasn't the fix "permanent"?
I tried looking for a good visual example and this article describes the issue, and fix, pretty well.
https://www.instructables.com/Fix-the-Red-Ring-of-Deathwitho...
The fix would only last so long because once a ball grid array looses connections there is no real fix. It takes very special equipment to create those connections in the first place.
If you search "ball grid array soldering" on YouTube you'll see what I'm talking about. They're a real pain to try to fix once broken.
EU at this time put a deadline to the end of use for lead based solder, so the move to leadfree solder was done right before moving to mass manufacturing. The poor cooling solution on the 360 compared to its heat output didn't do the system justice. The PCB would flex as it would not be heated evenly.
After Die shrinks and manufacturing revisions, more mature lead free solder also used. The Jasper units were pretty much tanks, and the cooling solution was oversized as they were the same as before with the much hotter and power demanding lager die first gen chips.
Video Cards from the era of the launch 360 are notoriously unreliable for the same reasons. Heat cycles were a death wish, luckily for videocards they normally had a cool down period after gaming idling at a desktop. While the 360 would commonly go from 100% load term load to off.
I will be skipping this generation. Not that it matters anyway, these consoles are impossible to find and buy, at least this will continue to be the case well into 2022.