#iFixit’s PlayStation 5 Teardown Reveals Easy Storage Access, Picky Disc Drive – Review Geek

Sony actually tore apart the PlayStation 5 all on its own, before our friends at iFixit could do their customary pro-consumer teardown service. But Sony isn’t all that interested in its customers actually repairing their game machine…and they don’t take nice, big pictures. So check it out if you want to drool at the insides of the latest in console gaming.

According to the guide, the PS5 is surprisingly conventional in structure. It’s also fairly easy to get open, thanks to those quick-release plastic body panels—the ones that had the custom scene briefly excited before the console’s launch. With the cover off, a single screw is all you need remove to access a storage expansion slot, which fits a standard M.2 SSD that you can buy from almost any electronics retailer. This isn’t the console’s actual, primary storage drive (which is soldered to the motherboard), and at the moment it doesn’t do anything. But Sony is planning to make this expansion slot accessible for boosted storage in the future.

Alas, once you get past the skin, you’ll need a fairly rare T8 Torx security driver to get tons and tons of screws out of the rest of the components. iFixit found that the majority of the interior space on the PS5 is dedicated to an internal power supply and an absolutely massive cooling setup, including heat pipes and a single beefy fan.

There’s one annoying discovery: apparently the disc drive included is hard-coded to the motherboard, meaning that end users won’t be able to swap it out for a new one if theirs fails. It’s a design choice the PS5 shares with those boxy new Xboxes, and the casual interpretation is that it’s designed to make owners more reliant on Sony’s first-party repair services.

iFixit has a one-hour live version of its teardown process on YouTube, hosted by Review Geek alumnus Craig Lloyd. They’ll be posting their usual repair guides for specific components throughout the life of the console.

Source: iFixit