Modder shrinks PlayStation 5 to a 6-liter case, runs cooler with lower power draw

Smaller case, lower temperatures, lower power usage and probably more consistent clock speeds.
That is a very cool mod.
 
Pretty cool, tho if that fan noise when he muted e33 is real, it's pretty damn noisy, and no chance that would cost the same as a regular ps5 pro. I love the fact u can easily clean it tho, we have 2 cats and they get filled with fur.
 
Saving 4l compared to the original giant is impressive, but against the revision it isn't that much anymore. Still nice work.

I'd always prefer a rather a boring box than kinda ugly weird shapes. PS1, 2 and 4, Gamecube, wii and One, Series S and X are good.
 
winjer said:
Smaller case, lower temperatures, lower power usage and probably more consistent clock speeds.
That is a very cool mod.
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Forgive me, its been a while since this topic was talked about..
I dont recall the PS5 clocks being thermal based? Unless i misunderstood.
 
crackajack said:
Saving 4l compared to the original giant is impressive, but against the revision it isn't that much anymore. Still nice work.

I'd always prefer a rather a boring box than kinda ugly weird shapes. PS1, 2 and 4, Gamecube, wii and One, Series S and X are good.
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I'll take the boring rectangles over PS5, but its an especially bad offender with the design. N64, Dreamcast and especially Genesis 1 hit the right balance to me
 
And that shows exactly why product design is so important... i mean, visually speaking, this PS5 is just like lots and lots of mini PCs (and that is not a complaining in itself, i really like mini pcs). But as a retail product and as a literal symbol of a brand that has more than 30 years, sorry, this PS5 is absoluty useless.
 
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MidGenRefresh said:
As stupendously cool as this is, I'd rather just use a mini PC.
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The problem is if you're looking at PS5 level GPU performance, then the only APU part that fits the bill is Strix Halo, and that's a damn expensive little box.

It seems to me that AMD are going to keep prices artificially high for some time so as to protect their discrete GPU lines unfortunately.
 
Physiognomonics said:
No. PS5 CPU/GPU clocks are dependent on CPU / GPU instructions count only.
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The PS5 uses a variable frequency / fixed power budget model. Sony calls it a "power budget capped, frequency-scaling" approach. It comes from AMD's SmartShift-style management.

The console is given a fixed total power target (somewhere around 200W combined CPU/GPU, though the split varies). The CPU and GPU boost up in frequency as high as they can while staying inside that power budget. If the workload causes power draw to spike (because of heavier instructions), the system reduces frequency to stay within the set power envelope. Temperature indirectly matters because thermals affect how much voltage is needed to sustain a given frequency. More heat means more voltage needed, more voltage means more power, and that triggers frequency reduction.

This means winjer winjer is correct. Temperature affects voltage which affects power draw which affects achievable frequency.
 
IFireflyl said:
This means winjer winjer is correct. Temperature affects voltage which affects power draw which affects achievable frequency.
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Sort of, in the planning of the system, but ultimately not in the execution of a user's actual unit. They established a "standard operating environment" in which they calibrated the system based on the code it is running, keeping it within the ideal power/temperature limits, and then they applied this same configuration to everyone's unit. So every PS5 thinks it is in the same environment, and runs the same code identically. Your actual power draw/temperature will fluctuate depending on your actual environment, but your PS5 doesn't care. They explained this in detail in the lead up to release, because it's critical that every system perform identically. It'll run the same in a hot room as a cold room, but it can still shut itself down if it gets too hot.

So a mod like this will not make it run any differently than any other PS5, but it might be able to run longer in a hot environment without shutting itself down.
 
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IFireflyl said:
The PS5 uses a variable frequency / fixed power budget model. Sony calls it a "power budget capped, frequency-scaling" approach. It comes from AMD's SmartShift-style management.

The console is given a fixed total power target (somewhere around 200W combined CPU/GPU, though the split varies). The CPU and GPU boost up in frequency as high as they can while staying inside that power budget. If the workload causes power draw to spike (because of heavier instructions), the system reduces frequency to stay within the set power envelope. Temperature indirectly matters because thermals affect how much voltage is needed to sustain a given frequency. More heat means more voltage needed, more voltage means more power, and that triggers frequency reduction.

This means winjer winjer is correct. Temperature affects voltage which affects power draw which affects achievable frequency.
Click to expand...
PS5 has 2 systems of variable frequency.
- The first one is when PS5 is cooled and powered in a normal way and that applies to 99.99% of cases. In those case the clocks vary based on instruction count only.
- The second is a security system that can lower clocks in abnormal cases when temperature reach some critical limit. When temperatures become too high then the system can downclock and even shut down to avoid harming the APU. This is this case the guy encountered but only because his "PS5" was not cooled down enough. This is completely different than the "power budget capped" "Smartshift" system done by Cerny.
 
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Clear said:
The problem is if you're looking at PS5 level GPU performance, then the only APU part that fits the bill is Strix Halo, and that's a damn expensive little box.

It seems to me that AMD are going to keep prices artificially high for some time so as to protect their discrete GPU lines unfortunately.
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Physiognomonics said:
PS5 has 2 systems of variable frequency.
- The first one is when PS5 is cooled and powered in a normal way and that applies to 99.99% of cases. In those case the clocks varie based on instruction count only.
- The second is a security system that can lower clocks in abnormal cases when temperature reach some critical limit. When temperatures become too high then the system can downclock and even shut down to avoid harming the APU. This is this case the guy encountered but only because his "PS5" was not cooled down enough. This is completely different than the "power budget capped" "Smartshift" system done by Cerny.
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In normal operation the PlayStation 5 is not "instruction count only." Sony explicitly said the PlayStation 5 runs at essentially constant power and lets frequency vary with workload. The console monitors power draw and adjusts CPU/GPU clocks to keep the APU within its fixed power budget, with SmartShift moving budget between CPU and GPU.

That is the default, everyday behavior, not a rare edge case. Higher silicon temperature raises the voltage required to hold a given frequency, and power scales with voltage and frequency. If heat pushes required voltage up, power rises, and the PlayStation 5 drops frequency to stay inside the power envelope. That's how thermals indirectly affect clocks even when you're nowhere near a shutdown condition.

Yes, there is a separate protection path. If cooling fails or a fault occurs, the system will further downclock or shut down to protect the APU. That safety response is separate from the normal fixed-power, variable-frequency management.
 
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IFireflyl said:
In normal operation the PlayStation 5 is not "instruction count only." Sony explicitly said the PlayStation 5 runs at essentially constant power and lets frequency vary with workload. The console monitors power draw and adjusts CPU/GPU clocks to keep the APU within its fixed power budget, with SmartShift moving budget between CPU and GPU.

That is the default, everyday behavior, not a rare edge case. Higher silicon temperature raises the voltage required to hold a given frequency, and power scales with voltage and frequency. If heat pushes required voltage up, power rises, and the PlayStation 5 drops frequency to stay inside the power envelope. That's how thermals indirectly affect clocks even when you're nowhere near a shutdown condition.

Yes, there is a separate protection path. If cooling fails or a fault occurs, the system will further downclock or shut down to protect the APU. That safety response is separate from the normal fixed-power, variable-frequency management.
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No.That was a naive summary that only confused people. But Cerny detailed his systems (2 systems like I said) in his interview(s) describing a more complex way of doing it. We know this because PS5 power consumption can vary quite a lot depending of games and scenes from 180W to 240W which completely contradicts this naive explanation. It is exactly the way I detailed in my quoted post. The confusion comes from this naive summary and Cerny describing the 2 systems in the same interview confusing a lot of people like you.
Sertyak said:
Every single PS5 runs games exactly the same, wherever you are in the Sahara or in the nord pole.
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This. If the PS5 is cooled down like intended (liquid cooling OK, fan is working, PS5 is not faulty etc) then the game performance doesn't depend of room temperature (if room temperature stays in human conditions obviously) and clocks only depends of instructions count. Otherwise DF and others outlets would have seen different PS5 performing differently, they tried to find those cases but always found all PS5s performed the same (if they were cooled normally and had the same firmware).
 
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Something like this would have come in handy when my PS4 got yoinked otta my living room by a window busta. I knew the thief was stupid because all he took was the PS4 and left a $2000 gaming PC behind. That PC is now my sons PC which is still kicking ass on modern games while the thief likely had to upgrade by now.
 
Physiognomonics said:
No.That was a naive summary that only confused people. But Cerny detailed his systems (2 systems like I said) in his interview(s) describing a more complex way of doing it. We know this because PS5 power consumption can vary quite a lot depending of games and scenes from 180W to 240W which completely contradicts this naive explanation. It is exactly the way I detailed in my quoted post. The confusion comes from this naive summary and Cerny describing the 2 systems in the same interview confusing a lot of people like you.
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Please provide your sources. I can find a dozen different sources for what I am saying, but I have no sources for the claim that you are making.

It's really important to clarify the PlayStation 5's use of variable frequencies. It's called 'boost' but it should not be compared with similarly named technologies found in smartphones, or even PC components like CPUs and GPUs. There, peak performance is tied directly to thermal headroom, so in higher temperature environments, gaming frame-rates can be lower - sometimes a lot lower. This is entirely at odds with expectations from a console, where we expect all machines to deliver the exact same performance. To be abundantly clear from the outset, PlayStation 5 is not boosting clocks in this way. According to Sony, all PS5 consoles process the same workloads with the same performance level in any environment, no matter what the ambient temperature may be.

So how does boost work in this case? Put simply, the PlayStation 5 is given a set power budget tied to the thermal limits of the cooling assembly. "It's a completely different paradigm," says Cerny. "Rather than running at constant frequency and letting the power vary based on the workload, we run at essentially constant power and let the frequency vary based on the workload."
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Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfo...s-and-tech-that-deliver-sonys-next-gen-vision

Follow-up with Digital Foundry interview:

"Developers don't need to optimise in any way; if necessary, the frequency will adjust to whatever actions the CPU and GPU are performing," Mark Cerny counters. "I think you're asking what happens if there is a piece of code intentionally written so that every transistor (or the maximum number of transistors possible) in the CPU and GPU flip on every cycle. That's a pretty abstract question, games aren't anywhere near that amount of power consumption. In fact, if such a piece of code were to run on existing consoles, the power consumption would be well out of the intended operating range and it's even possible that the console would go into thermal shutdown. PS5 would handle such an unrealistic piece of code more gracefully."
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Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2020-playstation-5-the-mark-cerny-tech-deep-dive

That is a direct quote from Cerny, so unless you mean he himself made a naive summary that he later clarified, this seems like a cut-and-dry explanation of how the PlayStation 5 operates.

EDIT: As an aside, you said this, "We know this because PS5 power consumption can vary quite a lot depending of games and scenes from 180W to 240W which completely contradicts this naive explanation." My statement was, "Sony explicitly said the PlayStation 5 runs at essentially constant power and lets frequency vary with workload."

I believe that you are conflating whole-system wall power with the APU's control target. Cerny's claim of "essentially constant power" refers to the managed power budget of the CPU+GPU package, where frequency is adjusted up or down so that the APU stays near its allowable range as workload changes. It was never a promise that the number on a wall meter would be constant. The outlet reading swings with everything outside the APU, too. PSU efficiency, fan speed, SSD and memory activity, USB peripherals, the disc drive, et cetera. Even inside the APU there is normal control tolerance and variation between models. There would have been an uproar if what Cerny was referring to was constant power from the wall. That would have meant the system would be pulling the max power it could from the wall constantly, and that's a huge waste on everyone's electric bill for absolutely no reason.
 
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