Now that we are getting close to the sixth year of the PS5’s life cycle, a new report has indicated that Sony’s consoles might need some maintenance sooner or later. This comes courtesy of modder and service technician Modyfikatorcasper, who wrote about the degradation of the liquid metal used as the heat transfer medium between the PS5’s APU and its cooling systems on social media.
In his post, the modder showed photos of a PS5 Slim (CFI-2016), which is less than a year and a half old, that has seen degradation of its liquid metal. This degradation comes in the form of it having dried out and oxidised and becoming a “patch/clump” that has lost all of its thermal properties that would assist in transferring heat from the APU to the cooling systems.
Modyfikatorcasper also noted that the position that this affects all PS5 consoles, and was the major reason behind the cooler design of PS5 Pro which featured deeper ridges that would prevent leaks and drying out. He also confirmed that Sony eventually upgraded the other PS5 consoles through the release of the CFI-2100, CFI-2200, and CFI-2116 models that made use of similar upgrades to their cooling systems. Along with this, he has also said that whether a PS5 is kept in the horizontal or vertical position doesn’t really matter for this, and that the liquid metal will face issues regardless.
“Console position (vertical/horizontal) DOES NOT prevent [liquid metal] degradation. The fault affects even the newest, year-old revisions. The main cause is application quality and degradation over time/temperature,” he wrote as his main conclusion. “All PS5 consoles—regardless of model—will eventually require professional maintenance!”
Responding to another social media user about the possibility of this liquid metal degradation being the result of simply getting a faulty product, Modyfikatorcasper responded by saying that his service technician work involved fixing many PS5 consoles that had issues with overheating. However, it is worth noting that Sony itself hasn’t yet made any statement about older PS5 consoles being afflicted by these issues. To that end, it is also likely that Modyfikatorcasper has been hit with some confirmation bias since they have to deal with faulty hardware on a frequent-enough basis that it might start seeming like the faults also exist in the majority of consoles.
If this issue does exist in a lot more PS5 consoles out there, the fact that it is an entirely internal issue means that it is also likely covered under warranties that Sony provides wherever it sells its consoles.
The liquid metal between the chip’s IHS (integrated heat spreader) and the cooling system is one of the more important parts of keeping any computer system functioning. While liquid metal is used quite often in things like consoles and pre-built PCs, on the custom PC side of things, we often see liquid metal preferred by users chasing higher clock speeds through overclocking thanks to how effective it can often be in transferring heat off the chips. Most computers, however, make use of standard thermal paste, which often tends to be more cost effective, especially if the user doesn’t have any plans to overclock their systems.
