Hey folks, I'm Bill detweiler, host of cracking open, CNET and tech Republic's tear down show.
Now, we've been cracking open things for over a decade going all the way back to the Xbox 360 and.
PS3 slim and the original iPhone.
So Sony has released a new tear down video of its upcoming PS5 console and I thought it would be kinda cool to watch that with you and share some of my reactions.
Let's go
[MUSIC].
All right, so just starting off, I really like how they're giving you a warning about violating the warranty if you do this, and about taking safety precautions if you're gonna do this, that's something we always talk about.
All right, now we've got a white background here, we've got a white table and we have the PS 5, which is.
Obviously Y2, so that's gonna make it a little hard to see.
Originally usually I tried not to do that but for this, you know, they're probably trying to give a very clean engineering aesthetic to the video, so that's fine.
It's also Always a good idea to do this kind of things in a dust free environment or at least as close as you can get in your home workshop, whatever.
Walking through the specs on a device like this is something we also try to do on our cracking open videos.
Talking about the land ports, talking about the HDMI ports, talking about the power connectors.
Does help give folks a sense of the device before you actually start to take it apart.
Now, one of the thing that's really interesting about the PS 5 is, you can see here it's kind of got this disc shaped base at the bottom because the device isn't necessarily flat, you need something to sit on if you're going to have it in the upright position.
Now, another thing that's really interesting here And I'll pause my video for just a second is that when he's removing the bass, it doesn't look like he used any special tools and that's great.
We'd love to see people build devices that can be taken apart without.
But regular screwdrivers, regular set of tools and don't need sort of one time use special tools.
So here since the base is meant to be removed by the user, it's nice to see them do that.
Just use a regular Phillips ****.
It's also really cool.
Something I'm watching them right now as they're putting the **** in this little hidden compartment that's in the base.
That's cool, too, It will help you keep track of the **** and not lose it.
Although, you know, we'll see if that actually happens.
There's also It looks like a little.rubber.or plastic dot that can come out of the base and use to fill up that **** hole, which is pretty cool.
It rotates and closes that's neat.
So there's not anything else that you have to do and Or the bass attaches to the side of the bottom here of the PS 5, which is cool helps it lay flat I guess.
So it looks like when you're actually tearing it down.
It'll be in this horizontal position.
Okay, so right now we're sliding the cover off the plastic shell.
Now that's cool.
Again, no special tools required.
It just kind of slides off, you know, I guess you lift up on the corner and and slide it off and you do that on both sides.
So that's really kind of cool.
Okay, so this is neat.
Our first look kind of inside you can see the really large cooling fan that's in there.
It's hard to tell exactly how How big the diameter on that fan is.
But it's a pretty good sized fan for a device of this size.
And now they're showing a few of the dust catchers, I believe, that are located here to keep dust out of the fan out of the airways.
That's really important.
These devices Are sit on shelves, they sit close to the ground, sometimes they sit in cabinets.
And so there's a propensity if you're in a normal environment a house like mine you maybe don't dust every day.
So dusts can get trapped inside the device and really impede the airflow which can cause the device to run hot and can cause premature failure.
So these are little touches like this are pretty cool.
Okay, so now again It looks like he's just using a regular screwdriver I can't see the what type of screwdriver it is, but it appeared to be maybe a regular hex head or even a Phillips head screwdriver there to remove that if it's the same screwdriver he used to remove the base.
It looked like just a regular maybe flathead screwdriver.
And this is cool again.
These are the expansion, I guess interface for any type of future storage expansion if they're going to allow for a hard drive an extra hard drive that you'd be able to have.
And this is all user accessible.
We haven't really seen them do anything.
It looks like That would void the warranty or that would actually take you inside the, the actual innards of the machine.
We're just looking at removing the covers and getting to those user accessible components.
So Okay, now this is really cool here.
So right now He's removing the warranty sticker so you can kind of make out the outline of some writing on these stickers.
Now device manufacturers put these in places and here it's over a **** one of the screws that you have to remove to remove the plastic shell there.
They put these in locations where if you remove them.
And you were to later take the device to repair shops in the back to the manufacturer.
It will let them know that individual know that you have removed the sticker and in so doing, it will void whatever manufacturer's warranty that the machine comes with.
Obviously once it's outside the warranty whether that's a year, two years, 90 days, whatever it is Then you know you're free to kinda do whatever you want.
Allright, you can see him remove the sticker there and then it, okay, so it also looks like he's peeling off another kinda piece of plastic.
They're a little cover flexible cover that's held in place, with some adhesive there.
Looks like that's hard to see here.
But it looks like there's some cables really thin or really small cables that were underneath that cover that have to be removed before you can remove the rest of the plastic components.
And now we've got the fan.
Okay now like this again.
It only showed him removing one screws.
Now it's hard to tell whether there were multiple screws.
It looks like there might have been two on this fan, but they only recorded him removing one, which is fine.
Sometimes we'll do that in our teardown videos just to kind of keep the pace moving.
You know it can get a little bit boring to watch Your move six have the same kinds of screws so perfectly acceptable here and really cool.
Also, this is so great.
I love the way the fan comes out one whole piece.
You just remove a few screws it pops out.
There's a pretty big fans 120 millimeters in diameter.
And 45 millimeters thick.
So this is a pretty good sized fan kind of squirrel cage designed for fans provides some really good airflow.
Okay, more screws coming out.
Again it doesn't look like special you know any special tools are required here and then you can lift off this plastic The internal plastic cover.
Okay, now this is cool.
One of the parts that often fails on these devices is the heart the, I'm sorry the Blu-ray drive here you've got the HD Blu-ray drive And it comes off as a single unit.
So let's say the drive were to fail, it doesn't look like it would be too difficult for you to take it to a repair shop, send it back to Sony having them fix it, send you your unit back if they do that, as opposed to just swapping it out with a refurb unit.
Or especially after the warranty is over.
It looks like it's going to be fairly easy for people to buy drives and replace it your own on your own.
Whoo with the metal case off of the drive.
This is really cool because you know one of the things that is noisy about consoles that have drives Are the are the drives, you know you've got mechanical parts, you've got them spinning you can hear a whirring sound.
I know on my PlayStation four Pro, the drive is loud.
It works just fine but it is really loud so I tend not to keep a disc in the drive.
When it's not being used, so this is cool to see them cover that drive with a metal case to help reduce some of that noise and also the rubber.
The little rubber gaskets there will help dampen the vibration that the drive could create or that could be transferred to the drive.
From the machine, those insulators that's really cool to see as well.
So these are really small cables, these black and white cables.
It looks like this is these are the connectors for the wi fi 6 and the Bluetooth 5.1 antenna.
Now you know I have to tell you when I've removed these wires on other devices This is one of those things that does happen to get damaged these can be very delicate and so when you're removing them or when you're especially putting them back on, you don't want to smash them down really hard the connectors on either end because you can bend the really the thin metal that makes up those connectors.
Okay, so now is removing the internal metal shield and the shields inside the device serve a couple purposes.
They can help dissipate heat but they can also but really they also serve To insulate it from any type of electromagnetic interference or RF, any kinda like interference that device might encounter.
You know microwaves can cause electromagnetic interference.
And so you wanna shield the devices from that the internal the chips from that interference.
Okay, and now you see I'm removing some what are looks to be thin flexible cables.
That's another thing that you have to watch out for when you're taking these things apart is a lot of times the cables and the connectors are very delicate.
You don't want to pull them out.
You wanna be very, very careful when you remove them when you disconnect the ends.
A lot of times they have some type of friction or they have some type of clamp connection on the end that puts tension on the on the cable the connector and holds it in place.
You have to make sure you're either sliding it or lifting up the gate on it.
And you want to do that very gently Are you risk damaging the damaging the connector and if you damage the connector You know, putting the cable back on I mean it's a it's a path of sin part and you just heard a $500 machine don't want to do that.
Okay, so here more removing screws.
And this is cool.
Again, Phillips ****.
That's great.
You don't see anything super unusual inside the device probably hex head and Phillips head screws.
And so removing this little metal plate on the back of the circuit board, Mom, it looks to be the back of where maybe the CPU the SOC GPU and CPU are going to sit here okay?
Now this is really interesting looking at the top of the circuit board, it's talking about the the CPU here and you're showing a graphic on the screen, about it being the AMD ryzen Zin 2, they're talking about having the talking about the cores and the thread count or the thread counts into the gigahertz speed.
The speed on this processor according to the specs that we've gotten from Sony, it's eight cores and runs at three and a half gigahertz net you compare that to the Xbox series x. It's similar processor, but it runs at a higher clock speed.
So it's at 3.8 gigahertz.
And so whether that makes a big difference in performance was just too early to tell from what I've heard just yet.
We'll just have to see how that affects real world performance.
Okay, so now they're showing the GPU here.
The that on the PlayStation five runs at 2.23 gigahertz and looks like delivers 10.3 teraflops.
Again, this is an AMD our DNA to GPU.
It's similar GPU to the series x But the series x is running at 12.
teraflops, this one's running at 10.3.
So again, how big of a difference that that discrepancy will make it we'll just have to wait and see.
In the real world when we get our hands on the units we can start playing the games.
AlL right, so Okay, cool.
So flipping the board over.
We can see what are likely the ram chips on the back.
Kind of configured in a star pattern or a circular design around the back of where the CPU is on the other side of the board.
Both the series x, And the PlayStation five have 16 gigs of RAM here so you've got eight chips.
So two gigs a chip is gonna give you your 16 gigs total Now what's interesting as he sort of talking about, he flipped the board back over and he's talking about the storage chips are pointing those out.
This is 825 gigs of SSD storage instead of a traditional platter hard drive.
So this is really cool.
If we've been using SSDs For a long time in PCs.
Great to see it come to console.
If you're not a modern, you put one in yourself.
But this is really cool because it will help reduce load times significantly.
Now, one thing that's interesting, while he's pointing at the storage strip Chips, as you can see a small white connector at the top of the board there on the top, sort of what would be top right side, the closest us.
Now what's interesting is.
This almost looks like a space for a battery, to run sort of what we used to call Siemens battery.
And I'm not necessarily sure whether that's what it is or not because there is nothing in it.
It could be that this unit was actually never powered up or it's never been used.
It was actually sort of a test unit or they just removed it and we didn't see it.
What's also interesting is if you haven't been kind of paying attention, or they haven't really shown it is that this unit, Appears to be attached to something now that's on the table with handles on either side of it.
I don't necessarily know what that is.
When we crack open devices, sometimes we will use anti-static mats or something that help reduce the danger of some type of ESD damage, the electrostatic discharge.
But you know he's not wearing a wristband that would do that you sometimes see technicians wear a wristband connected to a wire that is either connected to some kind of ground away from the device to help conduct any charge a static charge away from them and down the wire so won't damage the device.
I don't see that here.
So, you know, it does make me think maybe there's an electrostatic mat or maybe it's just a mounting bracket.
It's hard to tell.
So we're seeing more of the SSD chips here.
A custom SSD controller.
Troller because you know, it's not just about how fast the storage chips are themselves.
It's about how fast the pipe is getting data in and out of those chips.
So now this is really cool.
After talking about the SSDs, they're talking about some of the thermal characteristics of the PS five some of the engineering that they put in, to keep the heat in check.
But here they're talking about that thermal interface material.
That's the TIM that sits between the SOC or system on chip and the heatsink, and it helps conduct the heat away from the chip and into the heatsink.
This is really kind of interesting you can see here all this is a close up cool liquid metal Kind of aim this thermal material, it helps bridge any kind of holes gaps, air gaps that you might have tried to join metal on metal to help move that help move the heat away, and it's a pretty good size.
He'd say.
It's got some flat surfaces to help interface with the chips.
Then it has these really long vertical fins these that come off of it.
And those fins are what helped dissipate the heat the tubes, their heat pipes.
And it looks like if I'm reading what they're saying now they're actually using a vapor chamber in there.
For the in the PS five, which again, it's really cool to see this much cooling in a console like the PS five, it's gonna need it.
He is a factor with high end high performance graphics cards high end high performance processors.
Okay cool.
So a 350 watt power supply It's really modular.
That's that's, that's so cool.
Power Supplies fail.
It's great to see that it comes out as one piece.
It's modular, it's all enclosed.
That's also cool.
One of the pieces inside these kind of devices that can be dangerous.
Are the capacitors, they can store electricity for a very long time after they're disconnected.
And you don't really want to touch those.
Those have the potential, especially in large devices, like televisions, they do have the potential to cause harm.
So you don't want to touch those enemies.
Good to see that it's enclosed in plastic.
And again, it looks like he's removing the front or the back.
I can't tell what the way it's positioned, it's hard to kind of see but you can see some of the circuit boards attached to that plastic piece some of the wires attached to the plastic piece where the edges of the device.
That's really cool again that it comes off as one big piece.
And okay, and it looks like it's about done there, they got all there components laid out a nice square, [UNKNOWN] [LAUGH] lots of tabs it's really cool I love to see that, all right and that's it.
Well cool you know vendors don't do this a whole lot you know that's usually left to folks like us so I'm really glad to see Sony do this probably still do it myself just to see if there were any parts that they missed in their video.
But you know a few thoughts at the end.
I love that there are no special tools or at least that didn't look like there were special tools were required.
To service the PS five.
I love how everything is very componentized the drive comes out as one unit.
The fan comes out fairly easily.
You can get to the expansion ports without really any tools Other than that, you know, removing the base the screwdriver to do that and then it's just sliding off with hand.
I do like the clean design inside the PS five.
You know, you might think well what does it matter what it looks like inside It matters a lot, especially when you're thinking about airflow you want air to be able to flow into the places you want and not get into the places you don't because it can carry dust, it can carry debris in there.
And you know?
Just even if there are is no dust and debris, you want the air to be able to flow so it helps cool the system.
I really like that It also looks like it's laid.
Everything is laid out despite his kind of wild shape on the outside in a very logical way on the inside.
And that's cool because it does mean after a decade of doing this, there's a lot of engineering.
There's a lot of There's a lot of work and thought that goes into sort of doing these,, to making the inside extremely efficient.
I remember taking apart some devices decades ago, the original iPhone.
Wasn't anywhere close to the iPhones you have now, same with some of the original consoles.
But it also shows the last point I'll make, is that it shows how much these devices are like traditional PCs with the exception of them sort of not being as upgradable or beyond the storage, you can't add more RAM.
So obviously you don't need the expansion ports that you would have on a PC.
On a PC, motherboard for ram chips or for a separate video card, everything's on board so they're not as customizable as a PC but they're not designed to be, but I do like the interior design.
So that's cool.
Well that's it.
That's my reaction to the PS five tear down.
See more tear downs like this be sure to check out CNET and tech Republic's cracking open and subscribe.
