Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post E3 2019, pre GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

Let's cool it with the personal attacks at our beloved @orangpelupa.

 

I’m going by the BluRay drive’s insert (or whatever it’s called). And assuming some of those front ports are usb based. So unless those are mini USB ports and a mini disc drive, that device is rather large.

 

I'd disregard that design as PS5 design due to the difficulty in assembly and plastic mold. We're talking about assembling millions of units here and there's lots of corners to cut by adapting a sleeker design than a complicated design like this. Think PS2, PS3 slim and PS4. Those feel like pretty good mass production designs. PS3 phat not so much.

 

Although the design is quite ugly, the actual design looks no more complex than an external HDD case. Just with more ventilation.

The LETSGO Digital render definitely screams cheap external HDD case look. The unit render size seems wrong though (too small), and those function buttons (other than eject) wouldn't be present as well. Such a ugly design...

 

Actually I was talking about MY friends who have cats. Lol

 

What the current prevalent opinion on what node next-gen will use? Standard 7nm or one of the EXTREME ULTRA VIOLENT lithography enhanced nodes?

 

EUV isn't expected to reach high enough volume for 2020, it will probably start with phones in the first year. But since consoles are late 2020 products, maybe the timing can work? We're hearing about the first EUV products coming out later this year, so a year later isn't crazy. Just risky.

But N7P should be possible, which is just a small improvement staying with DUV.

 

Based on power consumption (max 200W):

7nm -> ~8-9 tflops
7nm Performance or EUV -> ~10-11 tflops

I think it's going to be either 7nm Performance or 7nm EUV for both.

 

I'm almost certain one (possibly both) will not be limiting themselves to prior selfimposed wattage caps. I wouldn't be surprised if we're hearing 250-300w systems.

Competition has become more aggressive... and limiting your product to prior practices may-not be the best solution when your competitors are hoping you do so.

 

The big problem as you start to approach 300 watts, heck even 250 watts is how to keep it quiet enough for living room operation?

• Brute forcing it will be easy and cheap but lead to a large cooling system. Think launch XBO.
  • The benefit is that tolerances will be large and sound degradation over time due to the environment will be gradual.
• Clever cooling solutions will be expensive but compact.
  • The drawback is that tolerances are tighter and systems will be prone to get louder more quickly unless the cooling system is regularly cleaned, and how many people regularly clean the cooling systems on their devices?

Even with the massive heatsinks and fans on the quieter 225+ watt GPUs, they are still significantly louder than the original launch XBO, or even slightly noisier XBO-S. Granted the original launch XBO was perhaps the pinnacle when it came to quiet operation in a modern actively cooled console, but you still don't want to go louder than say a PS4-P.

While I'm sure neither will be adverse to going up in power consumption for their device, the problems arise with how to cool it in such a manner that it's still acceptable in the majority of family households.

If one of them does decide to go into the 250-300 watt range, I guess we'll get to see just how tolerant your average household is to noise.

Then again, those old X360 optical drives could get REALLY loud (one of the reasons I was so happy to go all digital), so maybe it won't impact sales too much.

Regards,
SB

 

Some of us with disposable income would pay for whatever is the most powerful sku of the platform we already decided we would buy, but that is not the norm.

The real market doesn't show a preference for power, unless it comes at the same price. They will have to lose money if they want the power crown without raising the price.

The only way I see a 300w sku would be a dual sku launch, and apparently this possibility have been cancelled by MS, and not considered by sony. And nintendo is having amazing success with a sub-10w console.

Even 250w I'm not sure they want to go back to the hot mess from the PS360 launch models.

 

If those PS5 SDKs are any indication of a possible consumer design, with that much ventilation and chamber/tunnel design, then we're seeing something above 200w.

And hypothetically, if the GPU that's rumored for the PS5 is clocking 2GHz (175-185w), then add in the possibilities of 3.2GHz CPU (55-65w) and all other misc components (memory, SSD, ODD, fans, etc)... then we're seeing something above 200w, even with custom cooling and efficient power profiling solutions.

 

The general design, maybe. But that's a Devkit. It doesn't matter if it's expensive and consumes 250W or more (and last time I checked, developers have to pay their own devkits). The fact that it could be clocked at 2ghz doesn't mean PS5 will.

But you won't see more than 200W on the retail PS5. Not happening. Cooling would be too expensive, too hot, too loud, box would be too big so more expensive (have you seen the size of that dev-kit ?); things would get ugly fast. See @Silent_Buddha previous post.

 

What's the most power hungry CE box out there? Do we have any examples of a higher upper-ceiling than PS3?

 

While SB points are valid, my thoughts is that neither company (Sony/Microsoft) are going to bubble themselves within a 200w envelope this time around. But we shall see...

 

Doesn’t PS4 already answer your question!?

Also, I got a launch Japanese PS3 and it was really quiet for ages...just need a way to keep them quiet - I’ve often thought cleanable filters would be nice...even considered making my own.

 

I still have a launch ps3 60gb (because it's 100% BC) and it's crazy what we used to consider silent, it was by comparison, just because the 360 had a helicopter sound spinning discs at very high rpm. It's super silent when playing blurays (170w) but not really while playing ps3 games (206w). The difficulty above 200w becomes exponential.

There's no way around having to remove accumulated cat hair, the more airflow, the more it will accumulate fuzzies.

Filters are very restrictive and any fine mesh create hissing sound. They can only address this with a very large area of relatively coarse filter mesh so it reduces the velocity through the filter. This is what most PC cases are doing nowadays and it works extremely well, it takes a lot of space though.

Maybe they could, like, place the filter in a V shape to increase the surface area? I'm a genius.

 

Why Sony would waste resources on a custom case *design* for a DevKit which is significantly different to their planned launch escapes me completely. It makes no rational sense to me. DevKits don't need no fancy cases whatsoever.

 

Compared to my PS4Pro, the PS5 could run on diesel and it'd still be quieter.

 

it's just a dream, but i wish they would propose an option to link 2 PS5 for VR, one for each eye rendering. Would look glorious.