Sony PS5 NVME Expansion Options?

Having watched it again, I agree. I can point to some ambiguities and counter-arguments but it's not worth fussing over.

It's part of their standard licensing for Officially Licensed PS products.

It seems like Sony will just mention MM2s that work...

"once we've done that compatibility testing we should be able to start letting you know which drives will physically fit and which drive samples have benchmark appropriately high in our testing."
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But I do expect PS branded, licensed MM2s from IHVs.

 

Sure, but most peripherals - internal and external HDDs, non-official controllers, Bluetooth mics and headsets - have never required certification. Officially licensed products are about using the PlayStation and Sony licensing/brand.

This seems reasonable.

 

Don't know about controllers, but the rest of the stuff just works. HDD may indicate a minimum spec, but that's pretty straight forward.

The m.2 going to be somewhat different, with all the different types, form factors, speed, do they drop in performance too much etc.

I do expect Sony to just have a list of tested/supported products on the site.
The manufacturer will then just say "Sony verified" or something.

 

I thought you replaced whatever Sony put into the system. If the SSD is internal and then you have an expansion slot it would be a nice surprise. If you already have an 825GB drive, then you can add a smaller and, more important, cheaper SSD. Even an additional half gig ssd means a a 62% increase in storage size. I'm sure you would not be able to install 15 games at once, but I don't have even that many installed concurrently on my PC.

edit: Also, I do wonder whether you could use an HDD to only store PS5 games. And then swap the games into the SSD when you want to play, so you don't have to download them again. It would save time and internet bandwith. You would only need to wait for the game to be installed on the SSD.

 

Read the rest of the thread. It appears to be that way, but we have to wait for the teardown.

 

Listen to Cerny describing it in the reveal. If you try and match what he's saying to a swap of the internal SDS, and then try to match it to the idea of an expansion, what he says in totality fits the former concept far more comfortably.

 

Alas, this didn't happen, PS3 and PS4/Pro allowed the use of any 2.5" HDD no taller than 9.5mm - this is why we ended up with the terrible 20mb/sec bandwidth limit quoted by Insomniac devs for Spider-Man.

The speculation was about a formal certification programme, which I felt was unlikely. The indication is that Sony may publish a list of drives known to be fast enough around launch time but there is no way Sony will want to spend time checking an ever-increasing number of drives that appear throughout PS5's lifetime. As long as the PS5 does an initial check and verifies any inserted drive is fast enough, developers can work with those numbers. Sony just need to make it clear to PS5 owners that not all drives that physically fit may be compatible which was one of the first things Mark Cerny mentioned in The Road to PS5 talk. They just need to keep re-enforcing this message.

 

I thought that as well initially, but I'm starting to have some doubts. If indeed Sony is buying the flash chips and building the SSD themselves, I think it makes zero sense to build a removable drive that then you need to insert into each console.

Plus you would need to build an entire production line to build the SSDs. They would save a lot of money but integrating the internal SSD directly into the MB. You remove the need for an additional manufacturing line and simplify the PS5 manufacturing process.

But if the SSDs are being built by Samsung or any other third party, then yes, it will probably be a swappable drive.

edit: Having listened to Cerny again. I still can't figure whether the SSD they'll ship is removable.

 

Sony should just come out and clarify.

I thought it was “adding” at first, but there is some room for misinterpretation. e.g., “adding” a new SSD could “disable“ the built-in one.

The issue here is the mixed 6-priority level and regular 2-priority level SSDs operations. It’s up to how they want to deal with the complexity.

Then again, there are certainly several good arguments for a secondary SSD that adds to existing storage.

 

I'm have completely forgotten about the storage tech in PS5.

So assuming we do get 3rd party "certified" nvme's available next year. Will they match the built-in storage performance 100%?

There is nothing extra special about the built-in storage right? It's just a of matter of 3rd-party nvme's achieving a certain read-speed?

 

Sony’s SSD supports 6 priority level, regular ones only have 2.
To compensate for this difference, Cerny mentioned briefly that the regular SSDs will need to run at a faster clock >= 7GHz to “match” Sony’s SSD.

Because of QA needs, it may be simpler to keep Sony’s SSD around, and then add additional (regular) capacity on top. Some confirmation from Sony either way would be nice.

Not a big deal in the mean time, but the question will pop up again during their next presentation.

 

Right but regardless if you are not going to get the total performance advantage from 3rd party storage I'd almost rather just wait for a 1.65TB or 2TB PS5 model....

 

Minimally, you'll get some advantages with > 825GB capacity (high performance) 3rd party SSDs, plus any speed difference if they go beyond 7GHz for example.

 

This is the extract from Mark Cerny on PS5's SSD and expansion.

The long and short of it is, PS5's SSD is different in important ways that may necessitate the external m2 drive that goes in the PS5 expansion bay to be even faster than PS5's internal drive just to compensate for those differences. But until a lot more testing is done, they won't know how much.

My plans include augmenting PS5's internal SSD with a decent-sized m2 drive in the bay, probably 4Tb as minimum, but I'm also looking to get a conventional external 4Tb SSD in a 2.5" housing to hold all my PS4 games. I don't want to put them on a spinning HDD, not if PS5 will be able to massively speedup loading of PS4 games if they're sitting on a fast SSD - just not the super fast SSD intended for PS5 games.

edit: typos. Also, I can imagine Microsoft doing something very similar. They may have a less 'weird' IO controller tho so XSX owners may have better/cheaper choice for expanding their internal SSD storage.

 

Will the compensation still give you the same performance as Sony's storage?... It's going to be interesting.

I guess minor difference wouldn't be bad but anything more than that I'd rather just wait for a higher capacity PS5 model instead to get the full benefits instead of adding storage myself.

Not to mention it's not like these 3rd party higher speed nvme's are going to be cheap.

If Sony sells a 1.65TB or 2TB PS5 for $599 it might actually be cheaper than doing it yourself...

 

MS has already shown their expansion bay.

 

That's what they're saying, they won't know how much faster m2 drives will need to be in raw performance over PS5's internal drive until they've done a lot more testing. It may even vary as games will be using the drive in different ways. Is Ratchet & Clank Sony's ultimate tool for testing if external m2 drives can cut the mustard?

You're right, I had forgotten that Microsoft have "teamed up" with Seagate to sell 1Tb expansion drives.

 

Yep, you use SSD cartridges to expand storage.

 

Most of the magic is in the SSD controller (and the software stack) if I read Cerny's presentation correctly. That is partly why they can take 3rd party SSDs.

If they are comfortable to go this approach, it would imply they expect 3rd party solutions to exceed Sony's offerings in the long run (or same performance at a cheaper cost and price). Otherwise, there's no need to spend additional engineering time on 3rd party expansion.

But at launch time, things could be a bit uncertain due to typical release time constraints. There are probably higher priority asks elsewhere.

If the specs go mainstream (every PC gamers also want faster SSD; Apple devices already use NVMe SSDs ?), the industry-wide sourcing may be cheaper because of scale. Cerny alluded to this in his presentation. Sony's hardware people should be able to make the necessary projections.

At some point, my PS3 inherited HDD from my other devices.