The anger of PS5 repairers is growing more and more. And for good reason: according to their observations over the past few years, Sony consoles placed vertically can be damaged.
A new generation of consoles often causes technical problems. It’s basically quite logical: if a builder is looking to find the slightest flaw in his plans, he can’t compete with hundreds of thousands of players testing their new toy for the first time.
To quote everyone would be impossible, but we can remind you of the famous Red Ring of Death (RRoD) of the Xbox 360, the many DVD players suddenly breaking down on the Wii, or even the Joy Con Drift faced by the Nintendo Switch since its release. And if the PS5 seemed to avoid these worries for the moment, anger growls and is becoming ever more audible on the side of repairers.
The upright PS5 is in danger
Sony’s latest console introduced a new x86-64 architecture, admittedly, and a two-tone design that hasn’t been to everyone’s taste, that’s undeniable. But a small detail that is important has also caught the attention of hardware enthusiasts: rather than a simple thermal paste, the PlayStation 5 uses liquid metal to achieve the heat transfer between its APU and its cooling system.
An important solution, since the liquid metal is today the best thermal conductor possible in this configuration, but which is not without consequence if it is badly applied. Since it’s incredibly conductive, the wrong application can ruin a motherboard in the snap of a finger. And that’s what would happen with the PS5.
Several voices have been raised over the months to point out the fact that the protection surrounding the CPU to prevent liquid metal from dripping onto other components from deteriorating. And when the console is placed vertically, gravity does its job: the liquid can spread on the CM and connect lines that are not supposed to be. Without counting of course the first stage, which is to ruin power transfer from CPU to coolingimpacting console capabilities.
Do not put your Ps5 upright, here is the result the liquid moves and the freezes are there pic.twitter.com/A4Do3TkcXk
— Consoles System (@68Logic) January 4, 2023
Recently, it is the French technician 68Logic who pointed out this problem. However, he is far from alone. Ben Montana, a French technician too, has shown it many times on Facebook, both on traditional models and on the Digital Edition, also impacted. The English-speaking videographer TheCod3r also paid the price on a console that was still new and packaged, but which remained stored upright for several months.
For the moment, it is impossible to determine if this is a problem mainly impacting a small series of consoles or an entire batch. It is possible that this damage is limited to few references: the size of this sample does not allow us to establish it. However, these technicians all call for caution and recommend laying your PS5 horizontally in order to avoid irreparable damage if your console were to suffer the same problem. We have contacted PlayStation France for comment, and will update this article when we receive a response.
Wolo