Getting Rid of One of the PS4’s Biggest Issues
The PS4 has a big issue with heat regulation. As powerful as the console is, it has issues when it comes to getting too hot while gaming, and as a result it’s not unusual for certain games, like Dead by Daylight, to send the fan into overdrive. If you’ve ever wanted a jet engine in your living room, the PS4 has you covered.
Fortunately, the PS5 has taken efforts to help that, keeping your console cool – and quiet – as much as possible. The bulk isn’t purely a stylistic choice – it makes space for a 120mm double sided fan, a heat sink, and a liquid metal thermal conductor that will help regulate the console’s heat and sound levels.
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Of course, what works for games now may not work for games in five years. While every new console generation is inevitably hailed as a high point for graphics when it launches, over time developers will learn the architecture and capabilities of each console and showcase its true capabilities – as beautiful as early games in the PS4’s life-cycle look, they’re nothing compared to games like Ghost of Tsushima or The Last of Us: Part II. Games early on in a console’s lifetime may look good but they’re unlikely to be as advanced as later ones, and as such what cooling systems work now may struggle with games released five years down the line.
Luckily, Sony will continue to adjust the cooling system’s capabilities with future firmware upgrades.
PlayStation’s Yasuhiro Ootori went into detail on how this works:
“Various games will be released in the future, and data on the APU’s (Accelerated Processing Unit) behaviour in each game will be collected,” Otori revealed. “We have a plan to optimise the fan control based on this data.”
In short, the system analyzes how the games run and how the cooling system reacts, and based on this data the system will adjust how the fans work to ensure the PlayStation maintains its performance without the heat and noise associated with the PS4.
What game sends your fan into overdrive? Let us know down in the comments, or hit us up on Twitter or Facebook.