- Did we just get a really unlucky PS5?
Do you think this is all worth it?
- No. - Definitely not.
- No.
- I almost didn't post this video.
So about a month ago we took a look
at the brand new PS5-1200.
It completely redesigned internal upgrade
to the PlayStation 5
and what we saw were some major differences.
The smaller motherboard, significantly smaller heat sink,
and yet, the results that we saw when we did things
like thermal and power testing, didn't make sense.
You'd think that with less cooling, it would be hotter
or take it more power, but that just simply wasn't the case.
That new PS5 was actually better.
That didn't make sense to me.
I had since spent a full month trying to understand
exactly what's different about the 1200
and ultimately I failed,
but also we did get to the bottom of it.
So the story begins with our friends
over at Creative Electron who run
some of the most badass x-ray machines in the business.
So what we bought are the motherboards
as well as the heat sink assemblies.
What you can see is that we have the 1000,
which was the launch model.
We have the 1100, which was the first revision,
and then the 1200, which is the brand new one
that's just come out.
Now, my main concern here is that
while I would love to see exactly why
this is pulling less power,
'cause it's pulling like 20 watts less,
the problem is it's they're using liquid metal.
So as soon as we take this apart,
we can put it back together,
but we can't do any further testing
'cause we won't be able to get that same liquid metal seal.
- Definitely, yeah, we can just pop it in the machine
and see what it looks like.
So we've actually already done a whole video
at Creative Electron, which actually should be out soon,
so make sure to subscribe,
but the tech they're using here is incredibly cool.
So this is what the original launch model of the PS5,
the 1000, looks like.
So we actually can see even through those copper heat sinks
a little bit in the heat pipes, huh?
Yeah dude, that detail level is insane.
So we can pretty clearly see the actual SOC.
So these are the CPU cores, the GPU cores,
and these individual pads around it
are where the memory modules live
to actually feed the bandwidth to the PS5.
So for context, you can see how much we're zoomed in here.
I mean, what we're looking on the x-ray
is probably like what,
a slice like this big or so of everything.
- [Man] Yeah, roughly.
- Can we turn the down exposure a little bit?
I wanna try to get, let's see those memory module.
So there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
What I wanna have is a baseline
for what the PS5 1000 model shipped with
to see if it is actually any different with the 1200.
While it's a little hard to see in some of the video
that we've got here, but we actually do have
the full res images that Creative Electron sent across
which you can feel free to go download
at the link in the description.
So now we are moving on to the 1100 model motherboard of the PS5.
I'm expecting this to be very similar,
but let's see if we can spot anything.
Immediately, I'm seeing the same
four-plus-four pads for the memory.
You still see six heat pipes,
which I believe is the same even on the 1200
'cause you can see that externally.
So what's really interesting about what we're seeing here
is that because the 1100 has less like copper
and less of a heat sink, it's actually easier
to see through so we can get an actual clear image.
- [Man] So we can tried the last one.
- Let's put the 1200 in, the moment of truth.
The question is how different have they really made it
and where is our phantom power?
Okay, so first thought, even clearer
with even less copper and whatnot in the way.
Sony are just making our job easier
with every PS5 they come out with.
So I'm immediately counting the eight memory modules
that are all the way around, which makes sense.
VRM does look a little bit different, but not hugely.
I think these capacitors might look a touch smaller.
Now the question is, "Is that chip any different?"
- [Jared] What's the dark, perfect rectangle?
This is where the problems began.
While we got some incredible x-ray images
of the 1200 motherboard and the heat sink,
the only part of this entire thing
we couldn't get a clear sort of vision on
was the actual chip itself.
Now we could see that the socket was the exact same,
but because they do have this very thick heat spreader
right over the top of the CPU,
you just can't see through that,
and so it looks the exact same, right?
It's not the same.
If it's different, it might be slightly smaller
but it's tough to really say.
If this was like if this was like a proper slim version
where they had shrunk down to like a six nanometer process
or something or five,
I think it would be more obvious.
We'll go and actually pixel count and see,
but it doesn't look like there's an actual new chip in here.
I think the mystery's gotten deeper.
I think we've got a lot more work ahead of us.
In the first video, we connected each of the PS5s
to a kilowatt to see exactly how much power is running
in the very simple test of Astro's Playroom.
So today, I wanna spend a little bit more time
with three kilowatts.
We have one for the 1000, one for the 1100
and for the 1200.
See exactly how much power these systems are using
in a variety of circumstances.
Let's get our baseline by measuring the power
that each of these PS5s draws doing absolutely nothing
besides sitting on the menu.
So the 1000 is staying very consistently at 51 watts.
Next up we'll go to the 1100,
which is pulling 54 watts, 55 watts.
Wow, that's actually kind of high.
And then the 1200 is pulling 49 watts exactly.
It does seem like what we're seeing here
lines up with our original test.
Either the 1100, because it runs warmer,
is just requiring more power and more voltage,
or it could be a thing where the 1100 just lost the lottery
and it's just a badly binned chip that still works
and still completely functions but requires more power
and runs at a warmer sort of heat output.
- [Jared] 10% difference is pretty big difference.
- Especially doing nothing, that to me,
I don't wanna get too ahead of ourselves,
but that's a lot of extra power sitting here doing nothing.
Now, let's take a look to see how the PS5s handle YouTube,
so I'm gonna load up.
The new PS5 is better on all three.
1000's bouncing between 71 and 72 watts.
I'll say at 72.
The 1200 is also exactly 72,
and 1100 is 78, 77.
The 1100 is taking more power.
But now that we're seeing the 1000
and the 1200 run so close together,
it really makes me think that out of the three of these,
the 1100 is just more power hungry.
The 2021 model of the PS5, clearly pulling more power.
Did we just get a really unlucky PS5?
To be fair, when we did our initial test,
it was in gaming and that is gonna show us the PS5 working
in its absolute maximum to really see
what kind of differences are between the three consoles.
So for our game testing,
we're going to start out with Genshin Impact.
So each of the PS5s is logged in and loaded up
in basically the exact same spot,
looking at the exact same thing.
Everything between all three consoles
should be pretty much identical at this point,
so let's take a look at the power.
So starting with the 1000,
we are seeing it is running at about 223 watts.
So that's our baseline.
Now if we come over to the 1100, woo!
253 watts, that's a lot of power.
And we come to the 1200, 208 watts, 209 watts.
- [Jared] Oh my god.
- The 1200 is running like 20% less power than the 1100.
I mean that is a 43 watt difference.
So the most irritating part of this whole process
has been in trying to get clean data.
Now every PS5 is gonna be a little different.
Totally makes sense, right?
They're doing different bins, they wanna try to use as many
of these chips as possible, but what we're seeing
out of the 1100 doesn't make sense.
It's worse than the 1100 that we tested last year.
And to be clear, the 1100 that we've got here
is a brand new model that we've opened up out of the box
to use for this test.
Because it's so far off,
there's really only one more thing left to do.
I have purchased yet another PS5 to know what's wrong.
I'm so tired of this.
So this is the Horizon Edition, but importantly,
CFI-1115B, aka, the most important thing, this is an 1100
and it is a digital model to keep it completely consistent.
Do you guys have any guesses
on if I'm a giant idiot or- - Giant idiot.
What, giant.
- It's the first like guess.
- So the 1100, the original one that we tested,
pulling a little bit less watts than before,
but it's about 235, 237, something like that.
The 1200, again like before, pulling about 210 to 211 watts.
The 1100 that we just purchased is pulling,
it's 216 watts.
(crying loudly)
We just wasted all this time testing this PS5,
which for some reason just pulls way more power.
I mean on one side I am happy
that we bought yet another PS5, yep,
to confirm the numbers because it shows
that the PS5 we were testing with, the 1100,
was a terrible, terrible chip.
And while it looks exactly the same on the surface
and it looks exactly the same on the model number,
it was clearly taking up way more power
than an average PS5 needed.
- It's still kind of crazy that no matter what model
PS5 you buy, there could just be a 20 watt difference
in the amount of power it draws.
- But the thing is- - The same console.
- There's always been differences between the PS5s.
Like every single PS5 we've ever taken a look at
has just a complete lottery of different fans and stuff,
like Sony does mix and match components
and I can believe that that's the case,
but clearly the newest PS5 is the best model.
Do you think this is all worth it?
- No. - Definitely not.
- No.
- So fast forward to today,
I was ready to give up on this entire video.
We didn't have an answer.
We spent all this time,
then a light came through the clouds,
the angels started singing, and an answer fell into our lap.
I was watching the Digital Foundry Show
where they were discussing the PS5
and they mentioned that someone had actually
already figured out what we could not.
Angstronomics took a deep dive on the actual chip itself,
and while the physical external dimension,
the ones that we saw on the x-ray were the same,
the actual chip, the real logic behind it,
was slightly smaller, that was it.
That was the smoking gun.
It is in fact a six nanometer shrink
of the original seven nanometer chip,
aka, it's slightly smaller and would therefore be cheaper,
produce less heat and take up less power.
Exactly all the things we were looking for,
except we lacked the smoking gun
to explain what was different.
And I think I kind of guessed this at the very beginning
and then when we couldn't see through the heat spreader
at Creative Electron, I completely moved on
and never second guessed my decision whatsoever.
If it's different, it might be slightly smaller,
but it's tough to really say.
If this was like a proper slim version where they had shrunk
down to like a six nanometer process or something, or five,
I think it would be more obvious.
I said it! I said it! I said it!
I said it's a six nanometer chip
in Creative Electron a month ago.
Good job, Austin.
You nailed it and then you completely **** it up.
Something I did not want to do is to completely
take apart the PS5 1200 we had, first of all,
because it's very expensive and we can't get another one
if we wanted to do any other test,
but also I didn't see any reason to do it.
We had the extra images to show everything we needed
and if we took it apart, again, we can put it back together,
it will function, but it will be completely useless
for testing from that point forward.
There's no reason to do that, right?
It's not like it's an actually smaller chip
and we couldn't see it 'cause the x-ray image kept us
from seeing the only part
that was actually super important, oops.
So now what is time to do what we should have done weeks ago
and take apart our PS5 1200.
So it is still, all the screws are out,
but it should just pop loose now.
Although, I know, having done this in the past,
gotta fight us a lot.
There we go.
So my friends, this is the PS5 1200 motherboard
side by side with the 1000.
You could really see how much smaller it is.
The main thing I wanna do is measure the chips.
Look at the size difference, though.
Look how much smaller this motherboard really is.
It's one thing to see it on x-ray.
You're trying to tell me
that they couldn't make PS5 slim today
by just dropping it in there.
That's tiny, man.
You know what really irritates me?
Do you know what tripped me up from the very beginning?
On the x-ray, you can't see the actual chip in the middle.
You can only see the socket.
It is exactly the same, 45.7, 45.7.
The socket is exactly the same.
The difference is the actual chip inside that socket.
And of course the little heat spread right here
is exactly the right size to cover that part up.
Well, let's just do this.
So the PS5 1000 is 23.5 by 13.8 millimeters.
The 1200 is, be real careful here cause I
don't wanna get liquid metal all over the place.
21.8 by 12.3.
That's it, it's a six nanometer chip.
It's a smaller physical chip.
Takes less power.
It's cheaper for Sony to produce.
They can put a whole lot more of these on a wafer
than they can this.
I wish I would've done this a month ago.
Here look, let's look on the bright side.
Now we have proof that Sony's ready for their PS5 Slim.
This board is like ready to go.
- [Ken] All right, well here's your redemption arc.
Make your own mini PS5.
- I never wanna look at the inside of a PS5 ever again.
Part three coming soon, subscribe.
(upbeat music fading)