Cooling efficiency of official console designs and validity of hacks/after market mods to improve them

Shifty Geezer

uber-Troll!
Moderator
Legend
Darkplates after market plates for PS5 claim they run cooler thanks to having an intake over the fans.

1655822149864.png

From an article, they claim up to 5 degrees cooler based on Gamers Nexus' summary, which I'm guessing is this one (not watched)
Note hpwever that Darkplates don't provide their own measurementsl just marketing rhetoric.

We also reportedly get cooler PS4's by putting holes in the case.

The question is why are these designs made? Is the PS5 cooling a bit naff or are these holes breaking it and dricing up temperatures elsewhere on the board? Was the PS4's? If fan holes are valuable, why are they missing? Is there a point where console designs cooling became poor or has it always been compromised, and is it a widespread issue or only a problem (if there is a problem) with one manufacturer (Sony)?
 
Hadn't watched the video(s), but do any of the aftermarket products push marketing points of the consoles running quieter?
 
Darkplates after market plates for PS5 claim they run cooler thanks to having an intake over the fans.

View attachment 6629

From an article, they claim up to 5 degrees cooler based on Gamers Nexus' summary, which I'm guessing is this one (not watched)
Note hpwever that Darkplates don't provide their own measurementsl just marketing rhetoric.

We also reportedly get cooler PS4's by putting holes in the case.

The question is why are these designs made? Is the PS5 cooling a bit naff or are these holes breaking it and dricing up temperatures elsewhere on the board? Was the PS4's? If fan holes are valuable, why are they missing? Is there a point where console designs cooling became poor or has it always been compromised, and is it a widespread issue or only a problem (if there is a problem) with one manufacturer (Sony)?

Because they are quite ugly and PS5 has multiple temps that constantly check the temperature of the system. Fan will speed up if needed (that has being tested).

Besides I think they actually force air to pass through the lateral vents in order to cool the SSD located on the expansion slot (at least on one side). Creating a hole like this could theoretically make the (optional) SSD hotter. But I don't think anyone has tested this yet.
 
Depending on how PS5 and its BIOS are programmed greater air flow to the fan might not give a decrease in temperature but might cause the fan speed to drop.

If the console is deigned to main a constant operating temperature on the SOC of say 70c, more/cooler air flow would reduce fan speed and noise and won't lower temperatures.
 
Because they are quite ugly and PS5 has multiple temps that constantly check the temperature of the system. Fan will speed up if needed (that has being tested).

Besides I think they actually force air to pass through the lateral vents in order to cool the SSD located on the expansion slot (at least on one side). Creating a hole like this could theoretically make the (optional) SSD hotter. But I don't think anyone has tested this yet.
That's my thinking. Even if the SOC runs cooler and so the fan throttles down, if the airflow is designed to cool other components, screwing with this would be a bad idea. However, it's quite an easy argument to claim a better cooling design when you can show a thermometer reading 5 degrees C less. I would assume the engineers know what they're doing but seeing the mess that's made of system software and firmware sometimes, maybe they muck up hardware too?!
 
Myself and many others don't actually put the metal cover over the NVME drive.

I have a tall heat stink that sticks out the opening slightly and due to the cooling design gets cool external air pulled right over it and no doubt runs much cooler than it would with the cover on.
 
Because they are quite ugly and PS5 has multiple temps that constantly check the temperature of the system. Fan will speed up if needed (that has being tested).

Besides I think they actually force air to pass through the lateral vents in order to cool the SSD located on the expansion slot (at least on one side). Creating a hole like this could theoretically make the (optional) SSD hotter. But I don't think anyone has tested this yet.
I don't know about PS5, but this method of pulling air across the board or more specifically, a metal shield that makes contact to memory and certain ICs through thermal pads, is exactly how PS4 works. Air is pulled through vents on the side of the console, passes over the whole console before passing through the heatsink for the APU and then passes out through the power supply. I know there are mods for PS4 that cut holes above the fan but I'm not a fan of them exactly because they bypass cooling the other components. Also...
This looks like a really efficient way to get huge amounts of dust and other particulates into your PS5 as quickly as possible. :yes:
Again, not sure about PS5, but this is a problem on PS4. Every model of fat, slim and pro. The vents on the side that suck in air, they are larger than the width between the fins of the heatsink, and a wall of dryer lint will form on the heatsink because of this. And this is mitigated in part by fur being caught by the vents on the side. If you bypass the little bit of filtering that provides it would be a major issue. It's actually already a significant one.
 
If Sony have temperature sensors being monitored on those components that were being cooled by the redirected airflow, then dark plates won't be an issue. As the fan will spin up faster and faster and faster to coool those other components.

But if not being monitored, and only use soc temperature to dictate fan speed.... Yeah... Dark plates probably made other components hotter
 
Again, not sure about PS5, but this is a problem on PS4. Every model of fat, slim and pro. The vents on the side that suck in air, they are larger than the width between the fins of the heatsink, and a wall of dryer lint will form on the heatsink because of this. And this is mitigated in part by fur being caught by the vents on the side. If you bypass the little bit of filtering that provides it would be a major issue. It's actually already a significant one.

PS5's case air-flow design has dust catchers that are easy to access and clean. Changing the plates in this way, very likely reduces the effectiveness of the dust catchers meaning more dust would be doing into the PS5. The PS5 plates are precision molded (and covered with thousands of tiny PlayStation symbols) and it would not have been difficult to add multiple holes around the vents to improve the airflow if that was required.
 
If Sony have temperature sensors being monitored on those components that were being cooled by the redirected airflow, then dark plates won't be an issue. As the fan will spin up faster and faster and faster to coool those other components.

But if not being monitored, and only use soc temperature to dictate fan speed.... Yeah... Dark plates probably made other components hotter
It doesn't matter if you have temp sensors on, say, the memory or ssd, if the air isn't pulled across those parts of the board because it's bypassed by modified airflow.
PS5's case air-flow design has dust catchers that are easy to access and clean. Changing the plates in this way, very likely reduces the effectiveness of the dust catchers meaning more dust would be doing into the PS5. The PS5 plates are precision molded (and covered with thousands of tiny PlayStation symbols) and it would not have been difficult to add multiple holes around the vents to improve the airflow if that was required.
That's technically what the vents on the side of PS4 are for as well. The problem is, the gaps in the dust catchers are wider than the width between the fins of the heatsink so they suck things in that cannot be pushed out. I haven't personally measured the dust catchers on PS5 so I don't know if they've corrected that issue, but I can say that there are at least 6 different versions of the PS4 (2 fats, 2 slims, 2 pros) and none of those designs corrected it. There is one version of the slim that you could simply pop off the top, take out some screws and brush off the heatsink, but Sony "solved" that by melting plastic rivets in place of some of the screws.
 
It doesn't matter if you have temp sensors on, say, the memory or ssd, if the air isn't pulled across those parts of the board because it's bypassed by modified airflow.

then doesnt that means the fans speed was badly designed?

i think ideally it should spins faster and faster to try to cool things down, then safely shuts down the system when it cant cope.

so even if you use stovck plates but got bad airflow due to dust, or simply boneheaded user-mistakes (maybe dark plates? or maybe someone stuck an eraser between SSD and its shielding to me things "snug"? etc). things still relatively safe.
 
If the airflow from the slowest of fan speeds is more than enough to cool the components then it's fine. None of the stuff on the board that air passes over before the heatsink is going to be hotter than the APU or the air wouldn't cool the APU. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be cooled to maintain the proper life of the system. Those memory modules, for example can probably function properly with no cooling, but their useable life will be shortened. And pulling air over the whole board is going to help prevent hot spots, so you will be less likely to get localized expansion, causing solder disconnects and board warping in extreme cases.
 
I hope for PS5, Sony learnt their mistakes with ps3 YLOD and didn't too afraid to ramp up the fan speed to keep things cool, without being too afraid to be too loud due to their experience with the infamous PS4 jet take-off.

GN video reported that the RAM chips goes over 90c. Hopefully it's still in the good enough margin for a long lasting device

Edit
xsx is around 75c for ram and apu. So seems to have better temperature uniformity, less hot spots.

Potentially longer lasting? Or it allows Microsoft to use cheaper solders and motherboard layers?

 
Last edited:
I hope for PS5, Sony learnt their mistakes with ps3 YLOD and didn't too afraid to ramp up the fan speed to keep things cool, without being too afraid to be too loud due to their experience with the infamous PS4 jet take-off.

GN video reported that the RAM chips goes over 90c.
Hopefully it's still in the good enough margin for a long lasting device

Edit
xsx is around 75c for ram and apu. So seems to have better temperature uniformity, less hot spots.

Potentially longer lasting? Or it allows Microsoft to use cheaper solders and motherboard layers?

Many people critized the methodology he used on his first PS5 video about that one chip going over 90°C.
 
That's technically what the vents on the side of PS4 are for as well. The problem is, the gaps in the dust catchers are wider than the width between the fins of the heatsink so they suck things in that cannot be pushed out. I haven't personally measured the dust catchers on PS5 so I don't know if they've corrected that issue, but I can say that there are at least 6 different versions of the PS4 (2 fats, 2 slims, 2 pros) and none of those designs corrected it. There is one version of the slim that you could simply pop off the top, take out some screws and brush off the heatsink, but Sony "solved" that by melting plastic rivets in place of some of the screws.

It may be that these are different things. I have not read anything to indicate PS4/Pro had a ventilation system that was designed to funnel and capture dust in an easy-to-access / easy-to-clean dust-catching design but that is very much what PS5 has. I've cleaned my PS5 twice; the first when installed a NVMe drive and another about two months ago. The dust catcher design seems to work because there was quite a dust build-up in the dust catcher 'scoops' - probably because my PS5 is just a few foot from windows that are almost always open then temperatures allow.
 
Many people critized the methodology he used on his first PS5 video about that one chip going over 90°C.
thats concerning. so it potentially actually runs at even higher than 90c, maybe even 100c? closing even more to the max designed temperature of the chips?
or GN's methodology made the chips have more trouble transferring heat, thus its much hotter than normal?

EDIT
btw IIRC I've read somewhere someone complained one of the PS5 firmware update got more aggressive fan curve.
 
Last edited:
thats concerning. so it potentially actually runs at even higher than 90c, maybe even 100c? closing even more to the max designed temperature of the chips?
or GN's methodology made the chips have more trouble transferring heat, thus its much hotter than normal?

EDIT
btw IIRC I've read somewhere someone complained one of the PS5 firmware update got more aggressive fan curve.
The contrary.
 
The contrary.
Can you actually link to said conversation please. We can't ignore a datapoint just on the word of someone saying it's been debunked. ;) The Internet presently says PS5's RAM hits 93 degrees and isn't throwing up clear and obvious counter to that, thanks to GN's single video being duplicated everywhere.
 
Back
Top