Sony's PS5 Pro Spills Its Guts Oozing With Liquid Metal In Official Teardown
To showcase some of the improvements implemented in the PlayStation 5 Pro, Sony has posted an official teardown of the upgraded console. Performed by engineers Shinya Tsuchida, PS5 Pro Mechanical Design Lead, and Shinya Hiromitsu, PS5 Por Electrical Design Lead, the teardown offers a "deep dive into the console's innovative technology and design philosophy." It also provides some cool photography of the system's exposed guts.
It's not just the internals that were beefed up. The PS5 Pro separates itself from the previous PS5 releases (the original PS5 and the Slim version) with three distinctive slits adorning its upper mid-section. This isn't just for looks, but for added airflow consideration. According to Sony, the 'blade' design came about after "extensive discussions between the engineers and designers." The slits are also there to keep noise in check.
"Inside the PS5 Pro, there is a structure called a 'louver' that sits between the main unit and cover, which looks like a series of slats or fins. While it’s part of the design, it also prevents some of the fan noise from escaping the console towards the front direction. Since most users will play games while facing the front of the console, we intentionally designed the system to make it harder for players to hear the fan," Tsuchida explains.
Sony also increased the size of the rear exhaust vent to keeps temps at bay. This is likely due to Sony outfitting the PS5 Pro with a burlier GPU featuring 67% more compute units compared to the PS5/PS5 Slim. According to Sony, the upgraded GPU can deliver up to 16.7 TFLOPS of graphics performance, versus 10.28 TFLOPS on the non-Pro iterations.
Additionally, Sony outfitted the PS5 with a fan sporting a redesigned blade shape to "quietly" increase airflow, as well as some other noise-suppressing bits (like strategically placed screws on the metal shield to quell electromagnetic noise).
The PS5 Pro teardown gets into other nitty-gritty details about the hardware inside the system, though perhaps one of the more interesting aspects is how liquid metal for the thermal interface material (TIM) is implemented in the refreshed console. Tsuchida notes that the original implementation in the PS5 "was quite challenging at the time," which sounds like an indirect reference to claims that the liquid metal could potentially seep out.
"We spent quite some time conducting research on insulation when we were designing the original PS5. The basic structure remains the same in the PS5 Pro, but we made some improvements by adding fine grooves where the liquid metal is applied, so that the cooling effect is more stable," Tsuchida says.
Sadly, there's no video this time around like there was with Sony's original PS5 teardown. However, there's some neat insight and a handful of high resolution photos that make it worth a look.
