Screw it, estimated PS5 specs based on PS4 production costs transferred to today's components and costs.
Production teardown estimate:
https://www.engadget.com/2013/11/19/ps4-costs-381-to-make-according-to-hardware-teardown/
SOC Budget: Like before, the whole thing will be an integrated SOC, though probably built on a substrate or something? Either way the PS4 mm^2 budget was 350. A 5700xt clocks in at 251, however each CPU chiplet is only 4 cores and takes up about 75mm^2, not to mention the IO chiplet and other costs, though that should be comparatively cheap. Still, with inflation 350mm squared goes from $100 to $112 about. But with more mm^2 that'll be $130 roughly for the SOC, even assuming mm^2 stays the same from Sony's Pov.
RAM: Here's a big question. GDDR5 looks to be at an inflation adjusted cost of nigh a hundred today.
Transferring that to GDDR6 could give an insane 32gigs of ram today, above the rumored 24gigs in the dev kit. So 24gigs not just in the dev kit but shipping is easily doable, though it wouldn't match up with the 256bit bus width.
The big new cost item is the SSD. An EVO 970 looks to be
17c a gig retail, but margins are so razor thin on SSD manufacturing today that companies are actively dropping out, no big volume discounts here. Even with an ok discount 15c a gig and a terabyte next gen Samsung drive, for whatever replaces the 970, takes up $150.
The rest: Cost a little less than two hundred back when, so should cost a bit less than $200 today if we assume the HDD cost $20 back then.
That'd work out to an almost $600 manufacturing cost oop. So I dunno where they'd cut costs. Though the new rx 5500 has more work per bandwidth than the Rx 5700. Could end up with 36Cus, 192bit, and 24 gig. With upcoming 16 gigabyte per second GDDR6 bandwidth could be fine, and you'd cut maybe $45 there, get it much closer to the sub $500 cost, charge $500 Sony will probably go for (edit- or the move to 7nm+ will be enough for 40 with associated die space). Cut it to a cheaper SSD type and that's another $50 gone, and you'd have it less than $500.
Which is all to say if the new.. how the fuck do you abbreviate series X Microsoft you bastards! XSX? It'll do for now. Anyway, for $600 the PS5/XSX could have 48cus and a truly fast NVME drive with 32gigs of ram, assuming TSMC's 7nm+ fits that cost reduction in. Can't see it costing less or having better specs though.
From the GameSpot article and interview with Spencer it sure seems like it would have a lot of thermal cooling capacity. Any guess-timates on what it could handle?
To Spencer's point, the Series X design makes sense from an engineering standpoint. In an effort to make the console "disappear" into your entertainment center, Microsoft designed it to be as quiet as possible: with a single, large fan pushing high volumes of air out of the top. Spencer and Ronald confidently told me that the Series X systems in their homes are no louder than Xbox One X, which is to say, not noticeably audible when sitting couch-distance away from your TV. "There's always this tension between design and the kind of acoustics and cooling and function of the console," Spencer explained, "and we were not going to compromise on function. I'm just incredibly impressed with the design that they came back with."
Yeah it's a copy of the new Mac Pro design, single large fan flow through the case, even has a similar grating. By the Mac Pro reviews I've seen it is quiet as hell and does work with a good amount of hardware.