I love my PlayStation 4. We've been on some grand adventures together over the years. Exploring the blood-soaked cobbled streets of Yharnam. Gliding through New York city as Spider-Man. Taking my young child on a dangerous journey to the highest peak in the realm to scatter the ashes of his dead mum. Happy memories.
But it's not all been so perfect. As anyone who puts in serious quality time with their standard PS4 can probably attest, certain games can send the console's fan into an absolute frenzy. The first time I played Marvel's Spider-Man I thought it was going to fly away. I'm kind of scared to install The Last Of Us Part II in case attempting to play it burns my house down.
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The good news is that it sounds like a "great deal of effort" has gone into making the PlayStation 5's cooling system an awful lot less noisy. This is according to Sony's EVP European business head Simon Rutter, who discussed the thorny issue of PS5 fan noise in an interview with The Guardian.
"It's been nearly seven years since the PlayStation 4 was released," Keza MacDonald wrote for The Guardian. "And modern games such as The Last of Us Part II and God of War push it so hard that the poor thing sounds as if it's about to take off. (Incidentally, Rutter assures me that 'a great deal of effort' has gone into making sure the PS5 will be less noisy.)"
This lines up with a report from Bloomberg earlier this year that suggested Sony had a lot of money into an "unusually expensive" cooling system for the next-gen console. Naturally, this suggested that it had put in the work to combat the noisy fan of the PS4 - easily one of the console's most annoying flaws.
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A recently discovered patent for what looks to be a PS5 development kit (thanks VGC) seems to explain that the next-gen hardware will make use of a "plurality of cooling fans".
The design of the console itself, which was unveiled last night, also features two large vents. These should, I imagine, help to keep the console cool and stop the fans from working overtime and sounding like they're about to take off on a unmanned mission to Mars.
I know a lot of people have been ripping into the design of the PS5. But if it's shaped the way it is to reduce fan noise and give me a more relaxed gaming experience? I'm all for it.
Featured Image Credit: SonyTopics: PS5, PlayStation, PS4