The PlayStation 5 (PS5) has officially been on the market for nearly two years now. Given enough time, it’s a safe assumption that the console’s parent company, Sony, could release a smaller, slimmer version of the console, as it has done with previous generation consoles. For one engineer and DIY enthusiast, though, that moment couldn’t come soon enough and decided to build a “PS5 Slim” himself.
The impatient mad lad is a guy called Matt who is better known for his YouTube channel, DIY Perks. Matt is known by his fans for his ability to build products such as speakers, lights, and even literal desktop PCs, from scratch. Now, if it wasn’t clear from the beginning, Matt’s own take on a PS5 Slim isn’t official and is, again, something the off-beat engineer gave himself to do over the past several months.
The video begins, as they usually do, with Matt dismantling the PS5 and removing the console’s entire PCB and chipset. Once that’s done, he begins to take measurements and make calculations of the component, in order to make the new cooling block and cover for it. All in glossy, mirror-sheen copper, by the way.
The kicker to the whole weight-losing endeavour, though, is that the PS5 Slim isn’t all encompassing in its design as its official form factor. By that, we mean the new copper chassis of the console only houses the SoC and the motherboard, but not the critical and essential components, such as the power supply and fans. For both issues, Matt went with an external solution, literally; both the reservoir and water pump, along with the PSU, would be installed in a separate compartment that he says could be nailed behind a TV.
Matt states his case for an external PSU for his PS5 Slim by referring to past PlayStation consoles; with the PS1 and PS2 Slim, Sony shipped out these consoles with their own power bricks to compensate for their sizes and the chipset’s lowered TDP. This practice is fairly standard, and Matt does point out that some Xbox consoles – the Xbox One series, namely – also shipped out with external power supplies.
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With the PS5 Slim’s PSU, specifically, Matt chose to replace the console’s original 372W PSU with an HP-branded 750W PSU, which is more than plenty to power both the console and the pump for the water cooling.
The end result of Matt’s project was a PS5 Slim “console” with a thickness of 1.9cm, sans the waterblock and PSU, obviously. Performance-wise, the video shows the console running the new Guerilla Games title, Horizon Forbidden West, for several hours, with the chipset averaging between 46°C, although Matt reckons the internal temperature was actually as high as 65°C, while the RAM and VRM modules hit 52°C and 44°C, respectively.
You can watch the video to entertain yourself but it goes without saying that, while Matt’s endeavour to transform the PS5 into a slim form factor is novel, it clearly isn’t an ideal solution either, given the amount of time – remember, he spent months fiddling around with it – he spent building it.
(Source: YouTube)
