New PS5 Model CFI 1200 has lighter components, smaller motherboard
Youtuber Austin Evans has opened the new PS5 CFI 1200 Model, to showcase component changes in this lighter hardware revision.
Austin Evans had already showcased the changes on CFI-1100 revision, and in his opinion these changes were not good, indicating possibly that Sony were cutting corners on cooling to reduce costs (FWIW that opinion was controversial).
The New CFI 1200 Model is significantly lighter than the original PS5, 600g lighter for the Blu-Ray version.
PS5 CFI 1200 Design changes
In his Showcase video, Evans shows that in particular the motherboard has shrunk, accompanied by significant changes in the cooling system (additional heatpipe, smaller heatsink). These changes all contribute to the console shedding about a pound compared to the original model.
Picture of the CFI-1200 new heatpipe (source Austin Evans)
There are more changes to this design. The SSD enclosure also is seeing some modifications, with a smaller PCB. Evans mentions this could be to cut cost, but also to help with heat dissipation. The new motherboard design apparently shifts a lot of things around, in particular with the CMOS battery now hidden deep away in the bowels of the console, which could mean a harder-to-replace CMOS battery.
A comparison of the CFI-1000 (right), CFI-1100 (left), CFI-1200 (middle) PS5 motherboards. The smaller size of the 1200 is very visible.
CFI 1200 appears to use less power
Unlike his previous video, Austin Evans does not seem to be worried about the changes around the cooling mechanism. Instead he says the PS5 could be “better” than the original one as it uses 10% to 15% less power than its older sisters (in his tests, about 200 Watts compared to the 220 of the original model – and 230 for the CFI 1100).
Those are of course non scientific tests ran by the youtuber, but he mentions that it’s worth digging deeper into.
Some of these changes in power need could come from more efficient, less energy intensive cooling, as well as a (yet to be confirmed) new CPU architecture which could be less energy consuming.
Check the full video below for more details.
Yeah and no call of duty
There’s no salvation if you take his measurements seriously. Only interesting thing about this video is all 3 revisions are torn apart and put next to each other.
True. Definitely a non scientific approach of measuring things, for which he had already been called out in his previous teardown video of the CFI-1100
The look of the lighter PS5 model reminds me of my good old Wii Balance Board.
I wonder what’d happen if I step on it…
Even if I dont, pretty sure my kids will jump on it.
“Hey, look! Dad got us a new balance board!”
The original white Wii is still set up in my living room, and my kids play it regularly.
I feel like you just watched this YouTube video and wrote a bad summary of it here as news.
I remember the first time CFI 1100 heat dissipation was done, it only showed around 5 degrees hotter but in this video it’s around 10, so it became worse. The 1200 model seems to be better but real results should be available after 3 to 4 months of use. Still, this feels better than the 1100 model unless $ony did something really fishy inside the motherboard or cpu.