DF Direct Weekly: what should we expect from the new PS5 CFI-1200 revision?

September 12, 2022
Comments off
150 Views

Having skipped a week with our usual, scheduled DF Direct show in favour of The Last of Us and Intel Arc specials, we have plenty of news and discussion to catch up with, starting with the news that a brand new PlayStation 5 revision is en route to our shores now, having already made its debut in Australia. Tech journalist Austin Evans has already imported a unit, dismantled it and got to the bottom of what makes it different – and lighter – than the existing units.

We’re looking to go hands-on with the unit as soon as it arrives in the UK, but what Evans has discovered is intriguing – a completely redesigned, much smaller, mainboard along with another smaller revision of the heat sink along with other internal changes within the existing PlayStation 5 casing. Annoying from a future-proofing perspective is that the CMOS battery on the board now resides under the cooling assembly, so when this does inevitably run out of juice years down the road, replacing it will be a far from an easy job.

From my perspective, it is the power consumption numbers that are most interesting. Evans talks about a reduced power draw compared to the prior units he’s tested, but the nature of the observation is inconclusive in that his CFI-1100 power draw number was actually higher than his figure taken from the launch unit, while this one is correspondingly lower. Fundamentally, the silicon did not change between CFI-1000 and CFI-1100, so is this reduced power draw actually down to a chip revision? Or is it simply down to variances in the quality of the silicon – which can change on a per chip basis? Or maybe Sony has moved onto lower power memory modules? Regardless, a power consumption figure in or around 200W is still in the broad ballpark of the launch machine.

Read more

Comments are closed.