Playstation 5 [PS5] [Release November 12 2020]

I forgot where I see this.
The PS5's sharp is to guarantee in every angle no large-area surface would stick to the wall or something else.
To keep enough airflow.
 
Glad to see there's enough space for a M.2 SSD and a generous heatsink. That should increase the number of high-speed SSDs we can use for expansion.

So we're looking at confirmation of the sandwich heatsink patent, right?
I'm not sure the bypass capacitor grid below the SOC is entirely out of the ordinary. A lot of high-performance chips have components like that below. Nvidia just had a brief controversy over similarly positioned components with the RTX 3080/3090.

It's for show, so perhaps things were cleaned, but there didn't seem to be good thermal contact with them.


This is the heatsink sitting in the opposite side of the SoC, item 21 in the patent picture:
vusM9oU.png
That heatsink is too far off to the side, and the heatpipe in the shield looks to be routed over that generous ridge of white thermal compound over the underside VRMs off to the side of the GDDR6 and SOC footprint.
The underside of the SOC has at least two intermediate layers between the capacitors and the shield, and I am reluctant to assume good thermal contact in the absence of a sign of thermal pads or compound. The GDDR6 chips show where pads of some kind allowed for contact with the shield.

The capacitor grid is asymmetric, but that might be because there's a bigger field for the GPU, and then a different rectangular region dedicated to the CPU section.


Now, IIRC the patent also describes item 5d as being stacked memory.
If there is stacked memory on the bottom of the SoC, there could be some meaning to putting the GDDR6 chips in the bottom of the PCB.
There's silkscreened spots on the top side that look to align with the GDDR6 below. Could be space for clamshell mode for dev kits with larger RAM capacity.
They had a shot of the SOC and package, and at least externally it looked like a standard package.

So the patent clearly points at a stacked setup (I only see that this is applicable to a plurality of ICs), but it doesn't mention memory on 5d specifically. It only says that 5d and 5c are two distinct chips.
The patent covered a broad range of scenarios, most of which don't make sense here.
That diagram in particular would also hint at the chips being embedded in plastic or resin, which we see isn't the case.

If that is a "heatsink" and not just a custom looking backplate then what does tiny little plate like that can actually do? It is under the metal casing without airflow.
We don't see the underside too well, so it's not clear if there is a thermal pad. Another possible use is keeping the pressure from the heatsink mount's crosspiece from impacting the capacitors. The plastic crosspiece and metal cap could allow for higher mounting pressure being distributed around the periphery. It's possible the plastic in particular adds enough height to keep the cap from touching not just the PCB but the components under it.

Of course, they wouldn’t be as effective as a copper slug on those same vias, but this is probably a best of both worlds. And you’d already be limited in how much that portion of the board could be Swiss-cheesed with via holes for mechanical/rigidity concerns, especially under the static mechanical pressure of the heatsink assembly.
I think the capacitors aren't sized for uniform contact with a heatsink, although the focus or quality of the shot I saw isn't fine enough to be certain. There are components at the margins that might be taller than the grid in general, and there may not be an interface material.

Wow impressive, much of heatsink over a large area, looks very clean. Such a large heatsink can get rid of alot of heat.

Edit: liquid metal? Had that been used before, pc space? Exotic things we get atleast, like the ssd solution and the tempest audio. Like it ;)
Liquid metal compounds aren't standard in the PC space, but there are liquid metal compounds for after-market application. Sony did make note that they needed years to engineer a solution for the console, likely because of the unique constraints in using such a compound in a mass-produced product.
The complexity in applying and isolating it was one of the downsides which I saw noted for a use case like this.
I'm curious about the comment about getting vapor chamber performance out of heat pipes, since it's not like a vapor chamber isn't successfully used for this class of chip.

What metrics prompted the avoidance of a vapor chamber and the liquid metal application? Is it the specific dimensions of the heatsink footprint, noise level, or hot spot concerns with the GPU clock?

PS5 power supply is rated for 350W. Can we deduce something about the real power draw by comparing to ps4 power supply? Probably no huge difference in power consumption between ps5/xbox series x as series x power supply is rated for 315W.
There's usually a generous margin for Sony's consoles. The PS4 Pro has a 310W supply, for example. Some of the highest numbers I've seen at least unofficially for measured draw were in the range of 170-180W.
 
From eyeballing it they seem to have decided that they need very high conductivity across the entire copper baseplate to ensure the heat gets to the aluminum fins in a uniform manner, perhaps mixing materials in the baseplate or forgoing a baseplate across every fin in favour of just relying on the heatpipes to transfer energy to the fins wasn't getting the job done well enough? You're right that is a massive baseplate and will not be cheap.

Edit: I'm not sure cheap copper is a thing, even if you get a great deal on copper it's spot price is three times that of aluminum so any deal you get is still going to be more expensive than Al.

No there is no such thing as cheap copper, in fact it’s pretty expensive these days.The losses from the system are going to be very impressive as currently sits
 
We don't know what is cost-effective for Sony! They could have got a really good deal on cheap copper.

I love it. You can see they put a lot of thought into it. Two months to go for me. I can't wait.

Copper is several times the price of aluminum by weight and much more by volume. So it matters, but in the end the amount of copper in there probably only adds up to a couple dollars. If they manage to keep down to using it the first couple years it might only be a 40 or 50 million dollar choice.
 
Copper is several times the price of aluminum by weight and much more by volume. So it matters, but in the end the amount of copper in there probably only adds up to a couple dollars. If they manage to keep down to using it the first couple years it might only be a 40 or 50 million dollar choice.
In case you didn't pick it up, I was being sarcastic.

It's not completely built with copper.

https://forum.beyond3d.com/attachments/upload_2020-10-7_10-49-37-png.4726/
 
They even put some thought into manual servicing of the console. At 2m42 he's pointing at the holes where we should point our vacuum cleaner at, to gather the collected dust.


The plates surpass the middle black plastic "core", and the plates probably aren't strong enough to hold the console.


The enclosure has a curve that directs the airflow coming from the radial fan into the M.2's heatsink, if there is one.

QiFDLAy.png





It looks like the ideal setup for the usual M.2 heatsinks, which have their creases aligned with the long side of the M.2.

jWi187y.jpg

If you zoom in it looks like there is a black plastic stopping air flow. Thats why I"m asking

nJ4wHyB.png


it looks like its in its own sealed chamber
 
If you zoom in it looks like there is a black plastic stopping air flow. Thats why I"m asking

nJ4wHyB.png


it looks like its in its own sealed chamber
That black plastic is likely where the SSD will slot into. You see the black veins on the right? Most likely where the air can go out.
 
I'm curious if a comparison between teardowns for the various PS4 incarnations would indicate that the PS5 has a greater emphasis on ease of assembly/disassembly. I think some of the teardowns for the PS4 at launch showed more effort and fiddling with connectors or prying things off.
The PS5's heatsink mounting bracket seems like a further evolution of the PS4 Pro. That one had an x-shaped leaf spring with a plastic rectangular piece beneath it to shield the underside components. The PS5 may have gone for a higher-pressure setup more reliant on the pair of screws through the board rather than a spring. Perhaps Sony heavily corrected for the variable TIM and mounting processes before with a higher mounting pressure relying on screws, and a higher-complexity interface material that may tolerate application variation and maintain performance over time.
 
If they're just capacitors, why the need to cool them with a seemingly sizeable heatsink?

Capacitors are not cooled, it's the similar design as PS4 Pro... insulated clamp force spreader (white plastic thing), heatsink clamp, shield (with integrated heatpipe+heatsink for power circuits in PS5) ... there is no thermal conductive compound around the caps, you can't put any mechanical pressure on the caps, there is no thermal conductive compound between clamp and shield.

Things described in the patent are just not there.
 
shield (with integrated heatpipe+heatsink for power circuits in PS5) ... there is no thermal conductive compound around the caps, you can't put any mechanical pressure on the caps, there is no thermal conductive compound between clamp and shield.

At 4:33 the reverse of the shield - it looks like there are 8 white 'things' that rest on top (or float above?) the 8 capacitors? But I don't know what that is (plastic/compound/magic dust?)
 
360 mm2 is the die size of XSX vs 286 mm2 the die size of PS5... Only a 25%. I thought it was much more. Can be they are realized on different silicon processes ?
 
second edit: I no longer think it's actively cooled, or at least there is no dedicated channel. The air will come in however it can from the fan, but no dedicated channel, or at least the channel isn't as wide as the SSD.
At first found some evidence on the plastic black case that it would channel. I mean that arrow made sense. That looks like a hole there that would channel air over the SSD. But upon further review, you can actually see the reflection of the screw there against the plastic. And I didn't see that the first time. So I think that black area is blocked off. It's only going to get air from the sides... which is very much blocked off by the metal. Honestly it's really hard to tell, someone might need to do some photoshop colour inversions to see what's there.
QiFDLAy.png


You can see for yourself. the Video should be setup at the right time stamp, but the reflection of the screw is visible to me. That isn't dust imo, and you can see that plastic blocker when he removes the plastic shell. The metal casing is revealed underneath that, and there are a couple areas where air can filter through from the corner and sides.
 
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