Through a series of tests on different parts of the PlayStation 5 hardware, it was found that GDDR6 memory, which is used as both RAM and graphics memory in PS5, reaches a relatively high temperature. Which has sparked concern among some users who are concerned that their newly purchased next-gen console will end up going bad. But is this really the case?
With the arrival of the new generation come those who open the consoles and look for the fifth leg of the chair. And it looks like in the case of the PS5 they’ve found it and that’s the console RAM, which is GDDR6 memory, is reaching at least worrying temperatures that could lead to massive crashes.
PS5 RAM hits critical temperatures
The conclusions they have drawn are that if the main SoC of the console has good refrigeration, because keeps the chip at 70 °, in memory there is no thermal solution at all, because the design did not give preference to memory cooling Yes one of the 8 GDDR6 memory chips is placed at temperatures between 93 ° and 95 °.
Taking into account the information in the tableIt is worrying that one of the chips soldered to the board reaches this temperatureIt does not reach 100 ° C, which is the critical point, but it shows carelessness on the part of SONY in this regard.
The solution seems like something as simple as placing a heat sink on top of memory chips and a series of thermal pads on them. It is possible that SONY totally limited by manufacturing costs has decided to do without a better solution when it comes to cooling the console RAM.
Did SONY shoot himself in his own foot?
We really don’t know, But no company plays for money and prestige in the form of millions of defective units because a key part of the system stops working in droves. In a product like this, these possible errors are studied a lot because they are economically fatal.
It must not be forgotten like the Xbox 360 design rush I finish it costing Microsoft a lot, your console image and a policy change.
On another side, SONY is one of the companies that continually reviews their consoles, either to reduce costs or to solve design issues.. In any case, if you are thinking of buying a PS5 and you don’t trust it because of this problem, then you can wait a bit for the minor revision to appear with the issues resolved.
GDDR6 is too hot
GDDR6 is a good kind of memory, which gives us huge bandwidth and capacity for a very low price, but, in turn, it is lost in energy consumption and temperature.
The problem with consoles is that they are consumer goods, this means that they cannot opt for much more energy efficient, but at the same time much more expensive, types of memory, like HBM2 memory. Keep in mind that the level of energy consumption directly influences the temperature.
In the graph you can see how GDDR5 has a much higher power consumption than HBM2e, well, in GDDR6 with higher clock speeds than GDDR5, the power consumption is higher. Additionally, rumors say that one of the reasons for the AMD RX 6000 shortage is that the amount of GDDR6 chips that at 16Gbps end up passing the tests are few.
14 Gbps GDDR6 is used on consoles, but it is particularly striking that both companies had to work on industrial designs outside of the standard of conventional consoles, with more sophisticated cooling systems than its predecessors.
The post Your PS5 RAM may be burnt out, is your console in danger? first appeared on HardZone.
