Sony's Juicy, 7-Minute Long PS5 Teardown Video Reveals Liquid Metal For Cooling

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That's cool!

(Image credit: Sony)

Microsoft might have left it to Youtubers to showcase the teardown of the Xbox Series X, but Sony isn't doing any such thing. In its own video, Yasuhiro Ootori, Sony's VP of the Mechanical Design Dept & Hardware Design Division is seen piecing apart the upcoming Playstation 5, bit by bit, in a relaxing, yet intriguing 7-minute clip -- just like he did 7 years ago with the PS4.

Naturally, the teardown starts off with disassembling the exterior chassis, after which Ootori advances to the interior components. Inside you'll spot a blower-style cooling fan, an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive, and the the WiFi and Bluetooth radio. 

Around the 5-minute mark, Ootori pulls out the mainboard, which shows the AMD APU at the heart of the console, which contains an 8-core Ryzen Zen 2 CPU and AMD Radeon RDNA 2 based graphics. Ootori then flips the board around to reveal 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, which is placed in a circular fashion around the APU. 

Also visible is the onboard SSD with Sony's custom SSD controller, which will enable lighting-fast loading times from the 825 GB PCIe SSD.

But then, at the 6-minute mark, a most surprising feature is shown: Sony is using liquid metal between the AMD APU and the cooling system. This ensures the APU will run as cool as possible. Finally, Ootori shows the beefy heatsink, along with the final I/O bits of the chassis.

The PS5 is expected to land on November 12th for $499. For more about the tech specs of the next-gen console, check out our all-we-know summary.

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • NightHawkRMX
    Liquid metal in a console just seems like a BAD thing.
    Reply
  • Eliad Buchnik
    As he said they spent 2 years on how to adopt this mechanism to a console, so I would not say it is a BAD thing if its done correctly.
    Personally I've used liquid metal both in desktop and laptop for years without issue.
    Reply
  • Chung Leong
    If that much cooling is needed for performance level around that of an RX 5700 XT, how much of a jump in efficiency did RNDA2 really achieved?
    Reply
  • damfs
    Chung Leong said:
    If that much cooling is needed for performance level around that of an RX 5700 XT, how much of a jump in efficiency did RNDA2 really achieved?
    it seems that they overdesigned the cooling performance to be able to makes it quite
    Reply
  • NightHawkRMX
    All of the heat is under a small area of chip. Even if both the CPU and GPU are decently efficient, they will put out a lot of heat in a small area and be hard to cool. Think of the massive coolers on a 5700xt as well as the decently sized stock cooler for a 3700xt. That much heat sink is unlikely to fit in such a small console.
    Reply
  • Phaaze88
    This reminds me of some knuckleheads actually believing that the new consoles would be hybrid cooled.

    "Where are you now!?"
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    The processor looks like its covered with insulating material to keep the TIM from shifting around. I don't see a problem with it. The only question I have is how long does it last. It'll also put a damper in people trying to replace the TIM because the cooling system is designed around liquid metal TIM.
    Reply
  • saunupe1911
    The main thing I got out of this video is that the PS5 needs to sit vertical like a PC tower to get cool air flow. The Xbox team already explained in some many words that their system will cool better vertically
    Reply
  • nofanneeded
    looking at the heatsink and cooler size , I am little worried about Xbox series X thermals
    Reply
  • NightHawkRMX
    We will have to see.

    We don't know much about the heat output of rdna2.

    We do know the heat output of a 3700x, and the CPU in these consoles is essentially a 3700x but clocked lower. The CPU should be relatively efficient and easy to cool, but the gpu part of that package may not.
    Reply