Now we know why the PlayStation 5 revision is 300g lighter

Tomas Lyngen

Published: 17 Sep 2021

Sony announced a little while ago that a revision PlayStation 5 is coming and would be 300g lighter, but didn't say much on how it became lighter

Austin Evans did a teardown of the PlayStation 5 revision and found out where the 300g was saved

Sony have greatly reduced the heatsink the the new PlayStation 5 (CFI-1100B) revision, compared to the launch model (CFI-1015B)

New fan

The revision also features a new design on the fan, it has the exact same weight and manufacturer as the model they compare with

The launch model came with 3-4 different fan models, made from different manufacturers. Which is a common practice in the industry, to get enough parts to product a product. They'll provide a specs list of requirement and dimensions, then manufactures will get as close as possible to these specs. This also means the design and brand might vary slight, even when the product have the exact same model number

Thermal heat

When comparing the thermal heat exhausted in the back, the new revision is giving out about 3°C more heat

Couple people mentioning higher exhaust temps COULD mean the cooler is doing a better job dissipating heat. The thing is, Sony removed a SIZABLE amount of the heatsink on this new model. With fewer fins and smaller heatpipes it simply isn't as efficient at moving the heat out of the console.

Think about it as if it were a PC. If I remove a large CPU heatsink in favor of a smaller one the exhaust coming off my system would be hotter as the overall system temps are higher since the weaker cooler can't cope. That's exactly what's going on here IMO.

Austin Evans

Improved screw

Sony have also improved the screw in the bottom, by adding some rubber grip to the end. Making the screw easy to add / remove using your fingers, without the needs for tools

There have also been complaints about the screw getting really hot, so the rubber should also make it safer to touch