PlayStation 5 Teardown Arrives: Simple Maintenance, Difficult Repairs

The iFixit team has published their teardown of Sony's latest and greatest console, the PlayStation 5. This massive unit packs a considerable amount of hardware in its curved, sleek shell, as well as certain elements designed to make maintenance simple — as well as a few that make repairs much harder to pull off yourself.

As with the PS4 before it, you'll need to do a bit of regular maintenance on your PS5 to keep things running smoothly, and that's where the good news comes in. Sony has made it simple to access the console's storage expansion bay and vacuum dust from the interior, according to the teardown.

The iFixit team found that users can easily access the SSD expansion slot, dust ports, and fan by lifting and sliding the white panels. The good news is tempered with a bit of bad news, however — the teardown reports that the PS5's fan is secured in place using security screws. The storage expansion is easily accessible using a Phillips screwdriver, though.

As well, the team notes that though it's not too difficult to take out the optical drive and swap in a replacement, it's likely that the new drive won't actually work, meaning you'd possibly have to tear down the original drive to harvest the circuit board used with it — and there's no guarantee at this time that doing so will be an effective workaround.

Ultimately, simple upgrades and maintenance — namely, sucking out dust and expanding the storage — are made very simple with the PS5. However, the liberal use of security screws, the presence of liquid metal for keeping the console cool, and software locks mean that any substantial work will be more difficult.

You can read the full teardown on iFixit's website here.

Image via iFixit