Speculation time - what cooling tech could Sony be employing that we'll like the look of as per Cerny's expectations, and can deal with the predict thermals? Is there anything new? Will their double-sided cooling come into play? Will the board be mounted centrally in the case with space either side, and a fan draw air over both front and back sides? And new magical techs?
Thermal guidelines for CPUs can be fluid. While not directly comparable, I did look at some values that were apparently sourced from AMD documentation in
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/...lained-deep-dive-cooler-manufacturer-opinions.
If it were just the CPU, something along the lines of a Wraith Stealth might work for the CPU portion, assuming we can get a combination of Ryzen 3600 and 3700. Sony's target clock is a notch below the 3700, although there are 8 cores versus the 65W 3600. Odds are one core in the PS5 is OS-reserved, so Sony may be able to be more sure about what sort of instructions that one uses.
The main value I'm curious about is the P0 value (non-boost all-core base power), which we can see can be unexpectedly high for the desktop processors. We can also see how widely power can vary based on a modest change in clocks once you get in the boost ranges.
I think a console could get away with similar temp values and a cooler with capabilities in the same range as the Series X without going with double-sided cooling. I'm still not sure what the gain is here, and I think Sony might be going for less power.
Random speculation:
The 3600 seems to be the one that behaves itself, but how should we interpret the fact that the PS5's top-clock is below the base clock of a 65W CPU?
I don't recall seeing a PS4 power breakdown, but there was some speculation based on existing Jaguar chips that there might have been ~30W or so for 8 cores. How much lower than 65W is the ceiling for the PS5's CPU, and what does that mean for either the GPU or the total console power?
Microsoft could conceivably be allocating a value close to the desktop P0 rating for its CPU, if the power ratings from Digital Foundry are representative.
Is there a good reference for the GPU-only consumption of Navi 10? I thought I saw a reference for 180W for the 5700XT. Let's say we tossed on a 50% gain in efficiency for RDNA2, and could get ~120W for the same performance. If there were a guaranteed 90W for the GPU, 30W for the CPU, and 30W being sloshed about, then that gives a 150W APU consumption and 30-50W for the rest of the console for a Pro-like power budget. Maybe that's too conservative in terms of power savings?
To elaborate, what use is there to reach 3.5/2.23ghz if that means developers will have to cap their code to obey the power draw envelope. AKA reduce work per cycle!
I think they'd profile their code for performance and see less performance than the raw numbers would suggest. That already happens since real life doesn't give perfect scaling, but it would be a more complex thing to profile and opens up a new class of interactions between workloads and threads as far as adverse effects are concerned.