PlayStation 5 console comparison teardown reveals shocking truth behind the lighter first-revision PS5

A video created by Austin Evans has revealed why the new “11-series” PS5 is 300 g/0.66 lb lighter than the “10-series” launch PS5. Apparently, Evans paid a small fortune of over US$1,000 to get hold of one of the revised PS5 consoles, which was shipped from Japan to California, just so he could find out what differences could be discovered in the entertaining teardown comparison video. Digital Editions of the Sony machine were used here.

The first revision of the PlayStation 5 has the model number 1100B whereas the launch model has the number 1015B. As has already been reported, the stand screw for the new PS5 is easier to undo, but Evans wanted to dig deeper so he went through a brief battery of tests while both consoles were in operation. The noise emissions were similar and negligible from a reasonable distance and the power draw difference could be put down to a simple margin of error, but there was a perturbing find in regard to heat development.

The new PS5 was consistently 3-5 °C/6-9 °F hotter at the vents on the rear side than the launch PS5. Disassembly of the consoles also revealed that the fans were different, and although they weighed the same and came from the same supplier, the fan in the new PS5 has visibly longer and more curved fins. However, after removing the white covers of the consoles and removing all the screws, Evans and co-host Jimmy Champane of PSReady looked shocked at how clearly different the heatsinks in the two PlayStations were.

The revised PS5’s heatsink immediately looked smaller, and after removal of the whole mainboard, Evans was left exclaiming “Oh my God! I’ve got like half the heatsink!” Unsurprisingly, weighing the two boards answered the question of why the new PS5 is 300 g/0.66 lb lighter than the original PS5, with Sony seemingly trimming down some of the copper and aluminum parts of the heatsink to save on costs, leaving the console running at a higher temperature but within what the company would have deemed acceptable tolerance.

While there also seems to have been some change concerning the Wi-Fi module in the 1100B model, the hosts were obviously more perturbed about the considerable heatsink differences. With the addition of an expansion SSD, the PS5 would have to deal with even greater heat emissions, something that could be more of a problem down the road for the new variant of the console over the launch model. As many commentators have opined, it seems Sony has provided more of a downgrade rather than an upgrade with the lighter PS5.

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