One of the surprises from the reveal of the PlayStation 5 was just how big of a console it is. Not only compared to previous generations of hardware, but next to its main rival the Xbox Series X. What's also surprising is Xbox boss Phil Spencer has given us the best explanation yet as to why the PS5 is huge.
As VentureBeat reports, yesterday Phil Spencer was a guest on Animal Talking, which is a YouTube series hosted by Gary Whitta where guests have a chat while playing Animal Crossing. Unusual? Yes, but it works really well.
As part of the discussion, Whitta asked Spencer about the aesthetics of both next-gen consoles and points out how they are so radically different, unlike current-gen machines. Spencer was quite open with his responses, explaining that both Microsoft and Sony's engineers faced the same problems when it came to keeping these very high performance machines cool, and ultimately both teams tackled that same problem in very different ways.
Spencer says the Xbox Series X design came about because, "We wanted a very quiet console, so noise was something that we focused on. So we built a form-follow-function design so that we could draw a lot of air with a big fan spinning a little bit slower so we didn’t get those high-pitched whining sounds that sometimes consoles can make." The box design achieves that.
As to why the PS5 is so much bigger, Spencer speculates, "knowing that the PlayStation 5 is running at higher clocks, it just creates more [heat]." What he's referring to is the GPU Sony decided to use, which consists of 36 Compute Units, but Sony clocked them at 2.23GHz. Compare that to the Xbox Series X, which has a GPU with 52 Compute Units, but they run significantly slower at 1.825GHz. Sony's GPU is going to produce a lot more heat because of the higher clock rate, which means more cooling and a larger overall machine to house it.
Spencer admits he likes the design of the PS5 and will get one. He also says when he switched his Xbox One X for an Xbox Series X at home, it produced "no more noise" than the One X. What we don't know yet is how quiet the PS5 will be, hopefully the size of the console allows it to be whisper quiet.
Further Reading
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