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- Sony’s PS5 is one of the greatest video game consoles of all time, and now we finally know why.
- According to one of the main engineers behind the PlayStation 5, the cooling fan determined the size of the console, as one large fan was preferable to two smaller fans.
- Sony could have made a smaller console using two fans, but the PS5 could have been more expensive to manufacture as a result, and therefore would have cost more at retail as well.
Sony finally showed us the PS5 design during their Future of Gaming event, but we were left with almost as many questions as we had upon entering. We still didn’t know the price, the release date, what games would be available on day one, or what the user interface would look like. Many of those mysteries have been solved, but this week we finally got an answer to the biggest question of all: Why is the PS5 so huge?
In an interview with Nikkei Xtech On Tuesday, Yasuhiro Ootori, the vice president of mechanical design at Sony Interactive Entertainment (who you might remember from the PS5 teardown video), explained that the cooling fan is to blame for the PS5’s considerable bulk. It took such a substantial component to cool the motherboard.
According to Ootori, the cooling fan inside the PS5 is 45mm thick. That’s thicker than the cooling fan on the PS4 and PS4 Pro. The size of the cooling fan determined the size of the console, as it is the largest component within the PS5’s case by width. We also took a look at the motherboard that powers the PS5 in the teardown video, and the reason Sony opted to install a huge double-sided cooling fan was so that air was sucked in from both sides to cool the “side. TO”. and the “B side” of the board. The B side doesn’t have the system on a chip installed, but Ootori says it still generates as much heat as the PS4’s SoC.
“It was possible to develop the PlayStation 5 to be smaller,” revealed Ootori (translated by Chronicle of videogames). “For example, by implementing two cooling fans, one for side A and side B, the size of the PlayStation 5 would have been reduced. However, there is naturally an additional cost associated with having two fans. Also, controlling the functionality of two fans is more difficult than just one. With these additional hurdles in mind, we decided to cool both sides of the main board with a large fan. “
In other words, the PS5 didn’t have to be as big as it ended up being, but the unprecedented size was something Sony was willing to commit to in order to build a console that was relatively affordable and that ran quietly and efficiently. If Sony had chosen to use two fans instead of one, the company may not have been able to reach $ 399 for the digital edition of the PS5, which uses the same fan and motherboard as the standard PS5.
Jacob started covering video games and technology in college as a hobby, but quickly realized that this was what he wanted to do for a living. He currently resides in New York writing for BGR. His previously published work can be found on TechHive, VentureBeat, and Game Rant.
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