The PlayStation 5 is powered by a custom system on a chip (SoC) designed in tandem by AMD and Sony, integrating a custom 7 nm AMD Zen 2 CPU with eight cores running at a variable frequency capped at 3.5 GHz. The integrated GPU is also a custom unit based on AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture. The GPU has 36 compute units running at a variable frequency capped at 2.23 GHz, making it capable of a peak theoretical performance of 10.3 teraFLOPS. The GPU supports hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing, a rendering technique that allows for realistic lighting and reflections. The console has 16 GB of GDDR6 SDRAM with a peak bandwidth of 448 GB/s, and integrates Bluetooth 5.1, and 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6).

Both the CPU and GPU are monitored by a special boost system incorporating AMD’s SmartShift technology that adjusts the frequency of these units based on the current activities of both to target ideal constant power drawn and a model SoC performance profile. For example, if the CPU is running at lower activity, the boost system may reduce its frequency and increase the frequency of the GPU for higher performance without otherwise affecting power use or cooling.

The cooling system includes a double-sided cooling fan for air intake that is 120 mm in diameter and 45 mm thick, and a large heat sink with a standard heat pipe design that Sony says has a “shape and airflow [which] make it possible to achieve the same performance as a vapor chamber”. SoC cooling includes a liquid metal thermal conductor which sits between the SoC and heat sink. The system contains a 350-watt power supply. Sony developed the PlayStation 5 to consume less energy than the PlayStation 4 for suspended gameplay states.

The console has a new audio technology called Tempest Engine, allowing hundreds of simultaneous sound sources compared to 50 for the PlayStation 4.

WARRANTY PERIOD: ONE YEAR