PlayStation 5 CFI-1100 In The House: So What Next? (Patreon)

Hey everyone, Rich here, and I bring news of almost galactic importance. Yes, thanks to my friendly neighbourhood scalper, I do indeed have a CFI-1100 series PlayStation 5 to hand. I'll need a couple of days to finish up my current project, so I thought I'd ask what you'd want to see from a review. I will see about getting the necessary thermal probes for internal temperature testing but fundamentally we are looking at a cooling assembly with lower grade materials and less mass - it's a cost reduction measure, obviously. We should expect higher temperatures as a result but I do not expect it to have any meaningful impact to the overall quality of the experience you'll get from the device. 

Why? The Austin Evans video showed no appreciable change to acoustics (it was quieter if anything) and to understand why Sony was comfortable in making the changes we need to consider that first models of a console are typically conservatively built, with limited telemetry available on how first-run silicon and the cooling assembly will interact. Better to invest heavily in the cooler rather than risk defective consoles, then regroup later and look at a product refresh. With CFI-1100, Sony can go into the holiday season with a significant cost saving and ease up on one requirement for building the machines - so potentially more of them will get out there.

As for this initially conservative approach to cooler design, the classic case in point here is the OG Xbox One which had a massively over-engineered cooler - likely a 'nuke it from orbit' strategy to avoid any kind of repeat of the Red Ring scenario on Xbox 360. And you'll note that it was so over-engineered, that Microsoft went back to the design and increased both CPU and GPU clocks to take advantage of the headroom they had. So my current working theory is simply that Sony had much more information to work from owing to the millions of consoles out there and tapped into the available headroom. I have asked Sony to comment on the changes to the heat sink design, so it will be interesting to see if any comment is forthcoming.

But in the meantime, please do let me know what you'd like to see tested with this machine. I've seen some bizarre comments about performance concerns from potentially higher temperatures and the boost clock, so I guess we can stress-test the machine there - but the nature of the boost clock is that it's mapped algorithmically against a single model SoC, not the temperatures of the unit you have. I expect it to perform like any other PS5, but I guess it's worth running the rule over that. Anything else of interest you'd like to see? We've also got a great bunch of very tech savvy people here so if you want to help, let me know.

Oh yeah, the outer wrapper was already torn and was so in the delivery box (which the scalper opened in front of me). Just like my first PS5 from Sony! I didn't do it, honest!