How does Sony keep PS3 so quiet and cool?

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dodo3

Newcomer
I was wondering this since a lot of developers here and other forums have been claiming that their dev kits stay relatively cool and quiet for hours on end without getting hot.

Can anyone explain the design or cooling system in a nutshell? Maybe link to some agreements to how Sony implemented their cooling system for PlayStation 3?

Thanks! :smile:
 
Thanks for replying Shifty. Do you happen to have any technical info. on this? Some explanation on how it works exactly is truly appreciated.
 
Sony are hardware Ninja's. That's why.

They're masters at making stuff really small...

Good enough for ya? ;)
 
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dodo3 said:
Thanks for replying Shifty. Do you happen to have any technical info. on this? Some explanation on how it works exactly is truly appreciated.
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Nothing particular. It's just the same techniques always used.

1) Get your chips to run as cool as possible. This is the expected reason for the RSX clocking at 500 MHz instead of 550 MHz, as that 10% increase in clockspeed can see a huge increase in heat output

2) Put on some big heatsinks, preferrably copper rather than Alu. This mount account for some of the weight of PS3

3) Put a big fan on there. The bigger the fan, the slower it needs to turn to get the required airflow. Big fan+big heatsink = faster removal of heat from components. In the transparency pics through the case, there's a very chunky looking fan.

I don't think there's anything clever. Kutaragi San said it was a conventional cooling system IIRC. They just designed it very well with the intention to keep the noise down, and it loks like they increase the case size to accomodate big fans and 'sinks.
 
maybe watercooling. Whatever it is it's great value. And Blu-Ray is 2x so it doesn't spin disc so much as 12x DVD in Xbox 360. Sony really want to push PS3 to living room and noise is so importent there, but not only in living room because I would never buy a noisy console which would give me headache like Xbox 360.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
1) Get your chips to run as cool as possible. This is the expected reason for the RSX clocking at 500 MHz instead of 550 MHz, as that 10% increase in clockspeed can see a huge increase in heat output
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I don't think the clockspeed alone (10% only) could account for a huge difference in heat output, but being able to run the chip at a lower voltage certainly can.
 
breez said:
I don't think the clockspeed alone (10% only) could account for a huge difference in heat output, but being able to run the chip at a lower voltage certainly can.
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Well, yes, but lower voltages mean lower clockspeeds generally. By choosing a lower voltage to get the thermals down, you select a lower clockspeed too. One and the same thing IMO.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Well, yes, but lower voltages mean lower clockspeeds generally. By choosing a lower voltage to get the thermals down, you select a lower clockspeed too. One and the same thing IMO.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's exactly the same thing. I don't know how much they lowered voltage, but I'm sure they still had chips that could do 550mhz at that voltage, but yields for chips working on that configuration probably were not high enough to warrant that speed. I'm no expert but I believe the lowered voltage reduced the heat more than just the lowered clockspeed.
 
Dr Evil said:
I don't think it's exactly the same thing. I don't know how much they lowered voltage, but I'm sure they still had chips that could do 550mhz at that voltage, but yields for chips working on that configuration probably were not high enough to warrant that speed. I'm no expert but I believe the lowered voltage reduced the heat more than just the lowered clockspeed.
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I believe SG was trying to say is that when you lowered the clock speed, you don't need higher voltage, so in the end it's a combination of both...Me? I believe the lowered clock main reason is better yield.

Edit: I want to clarify that I don't believe RSX produces a lot of heat...I belive the reason PS3 runs quiet is because BR speed. On the 360, when the DVD-ROM doesn't kick into high gear, it's a relatively quiet machine. So with that said, the PS3 must also be a quiet machine with a slower spinning drive and probably better noise insulated console.
 
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Dr Evil said:
I don't think it's exactly the same thing. I don't know how much they lowered voltage, but I'm sure they still had chips that could do 550mhz at that voltage, but yields for chips working on that configuration probably were not high enough to warrant that speed. I'm no expert but I believe the lowered voltage reduced the heat more than just the lowered clockspeed.
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That's still what iI'm saying. Perhaps instead of saying 'that's the reason for the clock decrease' I should say 'that's why the clock was dropped'? To get the thermals down low enough, they dropped the voltage which meant a need to target 500 MHz instead of 550. Thus the clock drop was necessary to hit the desired thermal point. Which is a shorthand way of saying 'the voltage was dropped to hit the required thermal point, at which point yields were far reduced for the 550 MHz part, so the frequency was retargetted to the more readily attainable 500 MHz at the loer voltage.' ;)

Putting it another way, you wouldn't drop the clock speed and yet keep the voltage up. The two go hand in hand and by inference a drop in clockspeed means a drop in voltage, etc.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Putting it another way, you wouldn't drop the clock speed and yet keep the voltage up. The two go hand in hand and by inference a drop in clockspeed means a drop in voltage, etc.
Click to expand...

Yes this is what I was going for. The difference is that they might have kept the clockspeed if it was attainable at lower voltage. So basically I'm saying that they don't go 100% hand in hand, but maybe only 97% LOL. I'm sorry:oops:
 
ZiFF said:
Lot of people seem to blown away by the load times also.
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Long or short? If short (which is insinuated) in a show like this I expect a lot of data to come from CD rather than optical drive. I expect lots of caching to speed up load times to get more people through to playing the demos. The load-times might not be indicative of the home experience.
 
Short. From a video I seen of moto storm it was about 3-5 full seconds for it to load the map. I was quite surprised.
 
But I would imagine all games will cache to the hard drive though off of the BD in order to reduce load times. Which would of course make sense. I wonder how the HDD will be divied up in terms of dedicated storage.
 
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