Last month, Sony started releasing a slightly revised version of its PlayStation 5 console with a smaller, lighter heatsink and a handful of other tweaks. An earlier teardown and analysis of the revised PS5 made headlines for suggesting that the new PS5 was warmer than the old one, based on the temperature of the air vented from the console. This makes intuitive sense if you assume that a smaller heat sink will automatically be worse at dissipating heat. But more detailed and accurate testing from the YouTubers at Hardware Busters International supports our skepticism about that claim, showing that the PS5’s exhaust air is warmer because the new cooling system removes heat from the console better, as cooling systems are. mean to do.
The Hardware Busters test measured the temperature of the APU, memory, voltage regulator modules (VRMs), and exhaust air while: Devil May Cry 5 ran on both PS5 models. The exhaust air is indeed a few degrees warmer in the new PS5 than in the old one, but on average the new PS5’s APU was about 11°C cooler, dropping from about 51°C to 40°C.
The memory and VRM temperatures in the new PS5 are going up a bit – the memory temperature is going up by about 7°C and the VRM temperature is going up by about 1.3°C – but neither increase should have a huge impact on the reliability or longevity of the console. The much larger drop in APU temperature is worth the trade-off.
Comparison of the CPU, RAM, VRM and exhaust temperatures of the original PS5 and the revised model with the smaller heatsink.
These results compare only a single old PS5 to a single new PS5, and the numbers may look different with a larger sample size. But they should at least convince you that the smaller heatsink of the newer, lighter PS5 won’t automatically result in a warmer, louder, more interference-prone console. The model number of the new PS5 is CFI-1102A, while the original is CFI-1000 – look for these numbers if you want to be sure of the new revision.
The Hardware Busters team identified a few other minor differences in the motherboard with the new revision, but found that nearly everything important to keep the console cool—the number and type of fans, fan speed, and noise level—were identical or nearly identical. . The new PS5 was about one decibel louder and power consumption was a few watts higher under most conditions, but this kind of minor variance between consoles is normal and not necessarily related to the heatsink or other internal changes.