PS5 Pro Teardown: Every Piece, Explained

[Narrator] Every piece of a PlayStation 5 Pro.

It's faster, it's smarter, and it costs $700,

and doesn't come with a disc drive.

And if you want Sony's latest and greatest controller,

that'll cost you an additional $200.

Regardless of the price,

it's the most advanced gaming system humans have made

to date,

but you probably haven't seen what's inside

that puts it at the top of the console wars.

So today, we're gonna tear them apart.

This is Every Piece of the PlayStation 5 Pro

and the DualSense Edge controller.

Let's start with the frame.

You have these four side panels.

Each can be removed

by pulling on these four white plastic tabs

without any tools.

The standard and slim models

of the PlayStation also have removable side panels,

but they're not interchangeable with the Pro model.

If you opt to pay extra for the disc drive,

this is where you would slide that in.

The CMOS battery access.

Next, we're gonna take off the CMOS battery bracket.

A notable improvement in the PS5 Pro's design

is the addition of a dedicated slot for easy access

to the CMOS battery,

located just below the removal faceplate.

This compartment allows users to replace the CMOS battery

without disassembling the entire console.

This small but essential component

ensures the system settings and clock data remains intact,

even when the console is unplugged for extended periods.

It probably doesn't need to be replaced for five

to 10 years though.

Connectivity.

Here, you can see both the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antenna.

The PS5 Pro supports Wi-Fi 7,

though you need a Wi-Fi 7 router

to make use of those new features.

The Bluetooth is version 5.1.

The I/O board.

I/O meaning input, output.

Here's the board that houses the USB-C ports

for connecting various accessories like external storage,

controllers,

and even the PlayStation Virtual Reality 2.

Now that we've taken off the screws,

we can flip it and see the ports.

These are soldered on,

but what's nice about having a dedicated board is

that you can replace it independently

without fussing with the motherboard.

The M.2 expansion slot.

Next, we're gonna take off this expansion cover

for the M.2 SSD extension.

In addition to its internal storage,

the PS5 Pro features an expansion slot

where users can add M.2 solid state drives,

and there are mounting holes for every M.2 drive length.

The cooling system.

Next, we have the fan.

The fan is what drives the heat out of the device.

It's easily accessible,

which is great for cleaning and replacement.

First, we'll take off this cover

that protects the fan's power connectors.

These are JST connectors, or Japan solderless terminals.

You can see the positive, negative, and ground wires.

Next, we'll take off the four screws securing the fan.

And this is a good time to note that Sony did a cool thing

where they added in these little indicators

next to each screw.

So there's three dots, two dots, and no dot.

Each corresponds to the length of the screw.

So when you're disassembling and reassembling,

you'll know which screw is needed.

We're using this screw map here

to keep track of which screws we're taking out.

So this fan is bigger than those in the PS5

and PS5 Slim.

What this means is that it's more powerful

and it can drive more air,

but it needs less power to produce the same air output

as previous fans.

It's important to note here

that this console generates a lot of heat,

and what gets rid of the heat are the fan

and the heat sinks.

These heat sinks pull the heat out of the chips

and then drive it along down to the fan.

Here, you can see the fins of both heat sinks.

That's where the heat will be drawn to

and wicked away by the fan.

To get to these heat sinks and the rest of the components,

we'll take off this inner plastic shell.

Part of this includes

removing this tamper-proof warranty sticker,

which actually doesn't mean anything in the United States.

Thanks to the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975,

consumers in the US can open their consoles

for maintenance without fear of losing warranty coverage.

And 10 screws later,

we have access to the heat sinks and inner components.

We'll remove the wires that run to the Wi-Fi

and Bluetooth antenna connected via coaxial connectors,

and we'll also remove the CMOS battery board,

and then pry out that heat sink.

This is the first smaller heat sink,

and it's actually only held in place by thermal putty,

which draws the heat into the copper piping.

Here, you can see the copper pipes,

which draws the heat from the electronics to the fins.

Next, we're going to remove this metal shield

protecting the motherboard

by removing each of the 39 screws.

We'll also have to remove this cover

protecting the main board's interconnection

to the I/O board.

Now we can remove the metal shield,

but even though the 39 screws have been removed,

it's still adhered by thermal pads.

So we've got to use a decent amount of force to pry it off.

And here is the main board assembly.

Now you can see the second heat sink.

So the PS5 Pro generates tons of heat,

and it needs both of these sinks

to keep it from overheating.

This cooling system makes up for the majority

of the 6.8 pounds

or 3.1 kilogram total weight of this console.

And if you look here,

you can see two important prongs.

These connect the board to the power supply.

And here is that 390 watt power supply,

which powers your console from a wall outlet.

The motherboard.

Removing the sinks

and shield reveals the motherboard in all its glory.

First, we'll take off these brackets to reveal the APU,

or accelerated processing unit.

This one is an AMD SoC,

or system on a chip, made in Taiwan.

It's an integrated system

that contains both your GPU and CPU,

and it's the heart of the PS5 Pro.

Here, you can see the liquid metal on the back of the APU.

Liquid metal performs essentially the same function

as thermal paste,

taking heat away from the board.

Liquid metal is great for this

because it has such a high conductivity.

The downside is that it can, if it touches the board,

connect certain components and short-circuit your device.

New to the PS5 Pro are these etchings,

which keep the metal evenly distributed,

preventing it from pooling.

And this foam padding keeps the pool of metal in place.

So this APU is why we can use AI to upscale graphics.

The process Sony uses for this is PSSR,

which stands for PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution.

What that means is artificial intelligence is used

to fill in gaps where the AI thinks pixels should be,

to create higher resolutions,

even if there aren't normal native high resolutions

in that area.

And here, we have the I/O controller,

likely from Samsung sourced in South Korea.

What this does is control signals going in

and out of the device.

And these two chips here,

these are both NAND flash storage made by Kioxia in Japan.

NAND is a type of data storage architecture,

and it's important because it can retain its information

even without power.

Each of these chips is 1/4 of the storage.

You see there's only two here.

There's going to be two more of the same chips on the back

that hold the remainder of the storage.

The PS5 Pro comes with a total of two terabytes.

So each one of these holds 500 gigabytes.

And then down here,

these two components handle USB-C power

and data management.

This one is made by Texas Instruments,

obviously an American company.

It is a USB type-C 10 gigabit bidirectional

linear redriver.

And what that means is,

in this context, it helps regulate the flow of data.

Same thing goes for this one,

also regulating whatever the data is coming in

and out of the USB-C.

This one is a Richtek, a Taiwanese company.

And then we have these two chips,

which are multi-phase controllers made by Infineon,

a German company.

What these do is split the electrical current off

into different ranges.

Since different components require different amounts

of electricity,

these controllers make sure the right amount of power gets

to the right place.

Here, we have capacitors and inductors.

These store power and supply it in bursts to the components

that need an extra boost at a specific moment.

And the final component

on this side of the board is the wireless card.

This is how the system converts the signals

from both the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

When we flip the board,

you can see the connectors to this card.

First, on this side, the most noticeable feature is the RAM.

Each of these are two gigabytes of DDR6 RAM,

totaling 16 gigabytes,

made by Samsung in South Korea.

And then up here,

this is an important note for the PS5 Pro.

It has an additional two gigabytes of DDR5 RAM

from SK Hynix, another South Korean manufacturer.

These two gigs handle console tasks

while the DDR6 RAM is for gaming tasks.

And here are those mirrored NAND flash storage chips

that we discussed on the other side of the board.

And here is the M.2 connector that will allow you

to connect that extra storage in the bay we opened earlier.

And finally, this chip here is an HDMI retimer

from Nuvoton based in Taiwan.

This helps stabilize the data going through the HDMI.

And that does it for the console.

Now let's see what's inside the DualSense Edge controller,

which is quite a bit more advanced

than the standard DualSense controller

that comes with the Pro console.

This one is manufactured in China.

First off, it has a bunch of additional buttons.

See these function buttons, as well as these paddle buttons,

all of which you can program to perform different actions.

One cool thing you can do here is pull off the caps

and replace them.

Another exclusive feature

to the Edge is the trigger sensitivity

for the adaptive controllers.

You can make fine adjustments in the onscreen menu,

or here, you can switch between full, medium,

and light pull sensitivities

to make the game feel more realistic.

To access the internals,

first we'll remove the paddles,

then push this release button,

and this front trim piece falls right off.

And flipping up these levers removes the joysticks,

when you need to replace them,

if they ever start to get stick drift,

which can certainly happen.

Often, joysticks are soldered to the board.

So being able to replace them like this

is a really nice feature.

You can buy a replacement for about $20.

Now we can remove the rear trim piece.

We have a few screws we need to remove here.

Pop that trigger button right off,

and we'll remove these underneath the L1 and R1 buttons,

as well as unhook a spring.

And removing the bottom housing,

we can now see all of the internal components

that drive this controller.

First, you can see the battery here,

and we can go ahead and disconnect it.

Now we need to disconnect both vibration motors.

These are not soldered in,

but are connected by JST connectors.

These motors are able to give very nuanced haptic feedback

through different parts of the game pad.

And here is the entire trigger assembly,

connected to the board by this ribbon cable.

Here, you can see one of the two microphones,

which captures your audio for in-game chats.

The controller can also react to the sound of your voice.

And now we take out the battery bracket

to remove the main board,

the brains of the controller.

Beneath that, we have the speaker.

Next, we can remove the mid frame.

This frame holds the vibration motors,

as well as the touchpad.

And here you can see the button map

that actually conducts your pressing of a button

to the main board.

These are buttons held in by these gaskets.

And finally, we have the touchpad.

The touchpad can be used for multiple functions,

from strumming guitars to rolling a ball,

or swiping up to reveal a game's full user interface.

[upbeat music]

And that's it.

These are all the pieces it takes

to make the most powerful console

and the most advanced controller in gaming today.

So next time you fire up your PlayStation 5 Pro,

you'll know what it all takes to bring your game to life.

[graphics warbling]