PS3 autopsy

[Jari]

This is the thing I've been waiting for.

You see, I'm very curious about how one can cool Cell, RSX and PSU - all in the same enclosure - while keeping the case cool to touch and at the same time keeping the noise very low, at 22dBs. I haven't seen thermal design specs for either, Cell or RSX, but they are bound to release great deal of heat.

I think that it's a) very impressive engineering feat and b) operating very close to the limits of its thermal design. After all, the PS3 kiosks have a fake PS3 mock-up in the plastic 'bubble', while the real one is a much better ventilated place. Reasonable caution, I guess, but also a sign of PS3 not tolerating very high ambient temperatures (which is of course to be expected, it's just the degree of the problem that I'm curious about).

Anyhow, here it is. PS3 taken apart by PC Watch. Very much in Japanese, but you can see the pictures, right?

Looks like heatpipes, massive heatsink, and a big ass radial fan. Surprisingly simple, actually.

 

[James]

Pretty cool.

Hey, that bad boy drops in a couple of days, doesn't it?

Anyway, this leads into an anecdote of very little humour:

My PS2 was giving me troubles, going as far as to "sputter" and actually scratch discs! Fortunately, I had a warranty and could easily replace it. At the same time, however, I had just received quite the windfall of money and didn't want to deal with the hassle of continually replacing it. So, I went into the local EB and picked up a PStwo without doing the proper research. I kept it in the box, and looked it up, and saw people complaining of it burning out due to poor ventilation; after seeing that, I returned it, and got my PS2 replaced after driving all the way uptown to find one of the only refurbished PS2's in town that could replace mine.

With that said, I think it's fair to say that the PStwo suffered from the problem of poor ventilation. The Xbox does seem to heat up quite a bit, too, but not to the extent that it's a huge problem. The PS2 for the most part stays fairly cool.

I'm glad to see they remedied the problem of the PStwo with the PS3.

 

[Midgar]

Pretty cool.

Hey, that bad boy drops in a couple of days, doesn't it?

Anyway, this leads into an anecdote of very little humour:

My PS2 was giving me troubles, going as far as to "sputter" and actually scratch discs! Fortunately, I had a warranty and could easily replace it. At the same time, however, I had just received quite the windfall of money and didn't want to deal with the hassle of continually replacing it. So, I went into the local EB and picked up a PStwo without doing the proper research. I kept it in the box, and looked it up, and saw people complaining of it burning out due to poor ventilation; after seeing that, I returned it, and got my PS2 replaced after driving all the way uptown to find one of the only refurbished PS2's in town that could replace mine.

With that said, I think it's fair to say that the PStwo suffered from the problem of poor ventilation. The Xbox does seem to heat up quite a bit, too, but not to the extent that it's a huge problem. The PS2 for the most part stays fairly cool.

I'm glad to see they remedied the problem of the PStwo with the PS3.

So is there a solution to the PStwo?

 

[Jari]

You could try this, it works with PS3 too, after all. :-D

I wonder if that's a genuine Sony fan there...

Not to mention that you could open it up, to make the fan even more effective. Should give you that l33t-look as a bonus.


Oh, you meant seriously?

Well, first thing we'd have to figure out is how much truth there are in those rumors. Quick Googling gives somewhat mixed results. Very few mentions about overheating - no first hand experiences - some claims by mod chip makers that incompetent chip installers are messing up the cooling somehow, and of course the power adapter recall. Which truly did overheat, but Sony did recall them.


As for PS2 and Xbox... well, my Xbox doesn't get warm to touch. I have never managed to make it crash due to heat, but the CPU itself does run pretty warm, assuming that the thermal diode reports correct temperatures, of course. I've seen it idle around 50 degrees Celsius, which is a lot considering that the chip is not particularly power hungry. Of course, whether the box can issue halt-command is another matter, if it doesn't...  well, no wonder it idles hot. Wouldn't have any difference when it's running under full load.

My PS2 actually gets warm. But that's because there's a HDD inside. One that is a) old b) really loud (I have the loudest PS2 in the world, no doubt) and c) gets pretty hot. Without the disk I've never noticed it warming to a noticeable degree.

Dunno, but I think that in general about 95% overheating cases happen to people who don't either read the manual, care about what it says, or realize that these things do put out some amount of heat. With the 360/PS3-generation the problem is of course aggravated, since now the consoles put out some serious heat, so I'd take the manual pretty seriously this time.




EDIT: I wouldn't normally bother with this, since the tone can be interpreted as PS3 bashing. I don't really hate PS3, but I do think that Ken Kutaragi is about the most arrogant man alive... and I hate fanboys... it's just that this is way too juicy not to post. Sorry PS3 fans.

According to several web sources (NeoGAF forums, Beyound3D forums) people who have a PS3 have noticed an interesting feature. Get this: it can not scale.

So, should you own an older HDTV that can't accept 720p, you are pretty much screwed. If the game doesn't natively render 1080, PS3 will default to... 480p as a backup (which apparently has to be supported by all games, since otherwise you couldn't play them with SDTV). :-D

In other words, if you own an older HDTV and pre-ordered PS3... welcome to the next last-gen. :-D

Sure, all new HDTVs accept 720p, but still... how can a such a colossal screw up even happen? Xbox certainly has a scaler in it, 360 has a scaler, I think that PS2 has a scaler as well. PS3 does not.

I have to admit that I'll probably be smiling for the rest of the week. Why? Because of all the little "Xbox 360 is not TrueHD!!!!1111"-fanboys. How do you like them apples now? Yes, I'm an evil person, live with it.

 

[James]

I don't know if there is a solution for the PStwo specifically. The guy at the store did say that it would "burn out" if I left it playing for too long (which he specified between 2-4 hours!), and a lady in the line told me even before I got up there that it would burn out in no time.

I was implying that they fixed the PStwo's problem with the PS3, not that they fixed the PStwo's problem.


BTW: the old PS2 I mentioned was, without a doubt, the loudest piece of crap in the world. Hopefully by now it's been repaired and your PS2's status as loudest remains secured.

 

[Alhexx]

As for the PStwo issue:
I have one of those things standing in my room (if I remember correctly, it's a Rev.12 model - the first "small" PS2 model).

When I bought it I have been thinking about modding it, and after reading dozens of forum entries about modding the PStwo, it seemed to me that the laser of the DVD drive burns when you remove the case and start the console. Unfortunately, I do not remember, what exactly was the reason for this, but I think it had to do with wrong voltage supply for the optical laser or something like this (I'm not an expert at this).

However, my PStwo is still unmodded, and I never had any problems with the laser or something.

 - Alhexx