The PlayStation 5 looks like it’ll be taller and cooler than all of us

Sony today released a video showcasing the hardware of the PlayStation 5, as well as giving us our first real perspective on the console, and holy goodness it’s a big one. Its height seems to primarily ensure it runs cool and silent, and it’s also outfitted with some rather attractive internals. It’s certainly a better look than we’ve gotten at the console thus far.

The video shows the PS5 broken down piece-by-piece by Yasuhiro Ootori, the VP of the Mechanical Design Department. To start, this white tower of Orthanc-looking thing is over 15 inches tall when mounted on its vertical stand. That’s several inches taller than the PS4 Pro when it’s also vertical. It’s a tall drink of water.

However, this seems to be in service of keeping the console cool. Underneath the white siding is a 120mm x 45mm cooling fan that draws air in on both sides, and an exhaust port that spans almost the whole back of the console. It also has an enormous heatsink that, according to Ootori, can achieve the same performance as a vapor chamber, which is what the Xbox Series X has. The PS5 will also use liquid metal to cool the CPU, which Ootori says took two years of experimentation to get right. So yeah, this thing is designed to be cool and quiet.

This comes just as reports suggest the Xbox Series X runs a little hot, which its probably a coincidence. We can’t say until we see both consoles, but the video certainly seems tailor-made to assure viewers that the PS5 can remain cool. Masayasu Ito, head of hardware engineering and operation and Sony Interactive, said in a blog post that, as excited as the team was deliver next-gen performance, “we had to balance every aspect of the system, from focusing on reducing the noise level to enhancing the cooling capacity, more than ever before.”

One of the things shown in the video is an M2 bay where users who want more storage space can plug an off-the-shelf NVMe drive. It’s fairly easy to access as well — all you have to do is take off the white covers and one metal plate, which is certainly less than I’d have to do for my PC. The PS5 also has a Wi-Fi 6 wireless antenna and three SuperSpeed USB ports, two Type-A and one Type-C.

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I’m also a bit in love with the stand. It comes with the console and can be screwed into the bottom for vertical orientation. Should you wish to lay this horizontal, however, it can also be clipped to the side of the white covers, which are curved, to help the console lay flat. The best part is the screw can be hidden inside the stand, and its hole covered up with an included black plug. Sure, it has no bearing on how the console runs, but I enjoy the attention to aesthetic purity here.

Of course, a console can look any type of way… that’s not to say it’ll be better or worse than its competition. Also, Sony can make to console look as appealing as they wish in order to sell it. We’ll have to wait and see how to the two are next to each other. But still, I’m not displeased by what I’ve seen today, and the console certainly looks like it has the guts to justify its rather ostentatious appearance.