Official Playstation 5 thread

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gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
3,654
980
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I don’t get it, how is the Xbox getting away with being SO much smaller? The physical size may be a deal breaker entirely for me.
Microsoft simply has a better cooling solution IMO. They took a bit of inspiration from the PC world with the way it channels air.
the xbox sx design isnt especially good. if you look at the teardown video and airflow animation you can see that:
  • the psu and optical disc drive block 1/3 of the square cross section.
  • the central chassis holds motherboard and io board thus blocking another 1/3.
  • the remaining 1/3 is open and feeds the heatsink, but is very long.
Buildzoid has a video on the rtx3000 cooler and explains the issues. long pathway fin stacks are bad for temperature differential. additionally the only fan inside is sucking from the top rather than blowing, so the pressure/velocity at the finstack will be less meaning dust buildup will be worse.
it only seems impressive because the corsair One has a similar shape/layout. but the One also has a giant water rad and mesh sides. the sexbox design is fine for its much lower power demands, but it doesnt come close to a pc.

the ps5 is a 120mm diameter centrifugal "blower" fan but is 45mm deep and double sided intake. the air ducting channels it through a wide finstack with a short depth. sony is running the apu hotter so they need the volume for airflow.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
the xbox sx design isnt especially good. if you look at the teardown video and airflow animation you can see that:
  • the psu and optical disc drive block 1/3 of the square cross section.
  • the central chassis holds motherboard and io board thus blocking another 1/3.
  • the remaining 1/3 is open and feeds the heatsink, but is very long.
Buildzoid has a video on the rtx3000 cooler and explains the issues. long pathway fin stacks are bad for temperature differential. additionally the only fan inside is sucking from the top rather than blowing, so the pressure/velocity at the finstack will be less meaning dust buildup will be worse.
it only seems impressive because the corsair One has a similar shape/layout. but the One also has a giant water rad and mesh sides. the sexbox design is fine for its much lower power demands, but it doesnt come close to a pc.

the ps5 is a 120mm diameter centrifugal "blower" fan but is 45mm deep and double sided intake. the air ducting channels it through a wide finstack with a short depth. sony is running the apu hotter so they need the volume for airflow.

The series x design is much more thought out than the ps5. It’s obvious to me from the videos showing both (yes I watched them and the ps5 is way too large) and that’s the discussion. Nobody here is comparing either of the consoles to a PC cooling solution at all. I only mentioned that the way the air is channeled is inspired by designs used in the PC world. I’m also not counting watts with a console. I only care about the games and the performance of those games.
 
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gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
3,654
980
136
The series x design is much more thought out than the ps5. It’s obvious to me from the videos showing both (yes I watched them and the ps5 is way too large) and that’s the discussion. Nobody here is comparing either of the consoles to a PC cooling solution at all. I only mentioned that the way the air is channeled is inspired by designs used in the PC world. I’m also not counting watts with a console. I only care about the games and the performance of those games.
im not sure what you are trying to imply by saying "more thought out".

if your complaints are about size then it isnt a question of thought. both consoles are as big as the thermal output requires them to be engineered for. the sexbox is in a novel shape/layout and engineered to compensate for the novelty but it isnt "better" just because it is smaller. i literally outlined how the sexbox violates best practices when it comes to cooling design.

because of the variable environments and climates of the end user. the tolerance for the cooling solutions have to address the possibility of a non ac room in some 95-100+ fahrenheit part of the world. the ps5 is bigger because it needs to be to run at the clocks they want. the side panels run oversize to make sure the intake vents cant be pushed up against a wall or inside of a cabinet thus blocking air flow. the sexbox can be smaller because it is running cooler fixed clocks in the sweet spot of the power/perf curve.
i went thru the xbox teardown, and unless there is a ton of mesh filtering at the bottom that thing will be clogged with dust and worse in a year or two. and there doesnt appear to be an easy way to clean it. if you ever see photos of consoles in japan where a ton of people smoke, the inside of the finstacks look like a nightmare.
i have no horse in the race, im not getting either console. but based strictly on cooler design and ease of maintenance, the ps5 is far ahead.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
im not sure what you are trying to imply by saying "more thought out".

if your complaints are about size then it isnt a question of thought. both consoles are as big as the thermal output requires them to be engineered for. the sexbox is in a novel shape/layout and engineered to compensate for the novelty but it isnt "better" just because it is smaller. i literally outlined how the sexbox violates best practices when it comes to cooling design.

because of the variable environments and climates of the end user. the tolerance for the cooling solutions have to address the possibility of a non ac room in some 95-100+ fahrenheit part of the world. the ps5 is bigger because it needs to be to run at the clocks they want. the side panels run oversize to make sure the intake vents cant be pushed up against a wall or inside of a cabinet thus blocking air flow. the sexbox can be smaller because it is running cooler fixed clocks in the sweet spot of the power/perf curve.
i went thru the xbox teardown, and unless there is a ton of mesh filtering at the bottom that thing will be clogged with dust and worse in a year or two. and there doesnt appear to be an easy way to clean it. if you ever see photos of consoles in japan where a ton of people smoke, the inside of the finstacks look like a nightmare.
i have no horse in the race, im not getting either console. but based strictly on cooler design and ease of maintenance, the ps5 is far ahead.

You didn’t outline anything. Even the way name you use for the series x is condescending. Channeling air via a vapor chamber is a more thought out design period. It’s nothing to do with size and everything to do with how you channel the air. Just sticking a huge heat sink on there and pushing a fan across it doesn’t impress me. Even Noctua fan designers think the series x is a clever cooling design for what it is.

I also don’t know why you think the ps5 needs to be bigger to run at the clock speeds they want when it is lower performing than the series x which has more compute power in the GPU and a higher clock speed CPU by a small bit.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
14,510
5,159
136
I also don’t know why you think the ps5 needs to be bigger to run at the clock speeds they want when it is lower performing than the series x which has more compute power in the GPU and a higher clock speed CPU by a small bit.

They presumably had to jack up the voltage to get the GPU stable at 2.25 Ghz. So the PS5 is using more power than the Series X despite the compute power gap.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
They presumably had to jack up the voltage to get the GPU stable at 2.25 Ghz. So the PS5 is using more power than the Series X despite the compute power gap.

Could be. Kind of odd though to want higher clock speed and not more compute units IMO.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
14,510
5,159
136
Could be. Kind of odd though to want higher clock speed and not more compute units IMO.

Obviously a smaller die means more chips off the wafer (in theory) and thus is cheaper. Keeping the console price down is a big deal and Sony really isn't interested in losing that much per console.

It was probably supposed to be around 1.9 Ghz but then they found out was MS was doing and realized that was too far of a gap. Thus they decided to jack up the frequency.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
5,713
126
First look at PS5 user experience.


That gets a big fat "meh" from me. I don't care about anything they are showing with screen sharing and party chat with users, screen shots, etc. Then the whole cards thing I am not a big fan of how it defaults to the news first. That crap I hated on Xbox because it was just like one big advertisement.

It's kind of neat that you can use cards almost as "quick travel" in Sackboy, but let's be real how many games are actually going to implement that stuff? And then the help cards are for PS+ members only? Yeah I don't see that being a widely used feature, and also pretty useless because you can hop on the internet to find any of that stuff out anyways.

The main screen when you load up from a power off state looks pretty similar to PS4 but a lot more busy with a bunch of again, unnecessary stuff to me that I don't care about. I just want to be able to pick my game and play it which it looks like that is very easy to do.

Overall it's pretty much a big fat nothing berder to me.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
110,512
29,099
146
First look at PS5 user experience.


That gets a big fat "meh" from me. I don't care about anything they are showing with screen sharing and party chat with users, screen shots, etc. Then the whole cards thing I am not a big fan of how it defaults to the news first. That crap I hated on Xbox because it was just like one big advertisement.

It's kind of neat that you can use cards almost as "quick travel" in Sackboy, but let's be real how many games are actually going to implement that stuff? And then the help cards are for PS+ members only? Yeah I don't see that being a widely used feature, and also pretty useless because you can hop on the internet to find any of that stuff out anyways.

The main screen when you load up from a power off state looks pretty similar to PS4 but a lot more busy with a bunch of again, unnecessary stuff to me that I don't care about. I just want to be able to pick my game and play it which it looks like that is very easy to do.

Overall it's pretty much a big fat nothing berder to me.

I'm such a luddite. All I still want from any of these devices is: insert disc, play game. I do not need any other menu or apps or accounts or friends lists or trophies or streaming or whatever excessive garbage. (yes, I know I'm the one person)

press power, goes to individual game menu, done!
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
5,713
126
I'm such a luddite. All I still want from any of these devices is: insert disc, play game. I do not need any other menu or apps or accounts or friends lists or trophies or streaming or whatever excessive garbage. (yes, I know I'm the one person)

press power, goes to individual game menu, done!
Me too. Like 90% of that shit I don't care about at all. I cannot STAND the Xbox One dashboard there is so much crap on there and it is so unorganized. This looks to be going more that direction than what the PS4 did.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
I gave the video a watch, and it seems... fine? ...usable? A few things that come to mind to me...
  • Cards look like they could become a bit unwieldy depending on the number displayed.
  • Having to go "out of your game" (into the quick menu) just to see what is available in the game seems a bit odd.
  • Why did Destruction All Stars load into the start-up screens when the user selected to join a party?
    • You'd think the idea of "getting into the game" would suggest that developers would try to bypass the usual logo screens.
  • It isn't very clear how many games the PS5's main screen can display at once.
    • The icons appeared small, but it looks like they only exist at the top of the screen. This may lead to an awkward situation like with the Nintendo Switch where it can become a pain to find games if you have a bunch of played games.
Given the last point, I was wondering why we don't see Microsoft or Sony taking a page out of Valve's book and trying to suggest games to users. Valve will use your (potentially massive) Steam library and your play history to try to determine games that you may like to play. The recommended games are below the chronological list, so you don't feel like they're taking up too much space or anything like that.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
First look at PS5 user experience.


That gets a big fat "meh" from me. I don't care about anything they are showing with screen sharing and party chat with users, screen shots, etc. Then the whole cards thing I am not a big fan of how it defaults to the news first. That crap I hated on Xbox because it was just like one big advertisement.

It's kind of neat that you can use cards almost as "quick travel" in Sackboy, but let's be real how many games are actually going to implement that stuff? And then the help cards are for PS+ members only? Yeah I don't see that being a widely used feature, and also pretty useless because you can hop on the internet to find any of that stuff out anyways.

The main screen when you load up from a power off state looks pretty similar to PS4 but a lot more busy with a bunch of again, unnecessary stuff to me that I don't care about. I just want to be able to pick my game and play it which it looks like that is very easy to do.

Overall it's pretty much a big fat nothing berder to me.

Yea it looks too cluttered with stuff that should be tucked away in a menu that you press if you want to see it. At least on the Xbox dashboard there are categories on the screen, not just a bunch of tiles in a row so your games are separate from everything else and fairly easy to find for me. If they allow you to organize the tiles that’s a plus. Hopefully when you insert a game disc that pops up at the front of the list too.
 

gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
3,654
980
136
You didn’t outline anything. Even the way name you use for the series x is condescending. Channeling air via a vapor chamber is a more thought out design period. It’s nothing to do with size and everything to do with how you channel the air. Just sticking a huge heat sink on there and pushing a fan across it doesn’t impress me. Even Noctua fan designers think the series x is a clever cooling design for what it is.

I also don’t know why you think the ps5 needs to be bigger to run at the clock speeds they want when it is lower performing than the series x which has more compute power in the GPU and a higher clock speed CPU by a small bit.
lets start with the easy stuff.
if my tone is derisive, that is because I am mocking the marketing team that came up with the naming scheme and whichever executive decided to go with it. it is a stupid and confusing scheme that anyone with a shred of common sense would have avoided.

  • xbox to xbox360. this is fine, its a little xgames trendy sounding but avoids the whole nonsense of "xb2 vs ps3 uniformed consumer thinks bigger number sounds better" marketing silliness.
  • xbox360 to xbox720 would have been fine and consistent, but nope they called their 3rd gen the xbox One. this is patently stupid. there are hours of yt vids on how stupid. the fact that is opens itself up to the joke of "xbone" is evidence that things were not "well thought out". there are lists of literal dozens of better names from the public.
  • xboxone to xbox series is just doubling down on the first round of stupidity. repeating the x and s variants just adds to the problem. xboxtwo/xbox2 would have been slightly less stupid but at least it would have been clear to the end user and retailers having to organize listings. the xbox series x/s vs xbox 1x/s has created a shitshow of confusion for retailer and used sellers/buyers of peripherals on ebay/craigslist/etc. sexbox is the mildest of deprecatory names. you can shorten it to xb sex and xb ses, but that looks funny. most will probably go with xb sx and xb ss. gee good thing there isnt a ww2 nazi military wing known as the SS. anyone not living is the corporate bubble would have pointed this stuff out and steered clear of it. but because microsoft is trying to push for gaming as a service on server hardware, we get the "series" line so they can downplay the "i have the latest console version" mentality and transition to the "my subscription to the xb gaming service is paid this month" mindset.
i would happily mock sony by using a silly name when they do something stupid with backwards compatibility or account subscription, except they avoided any good ones by keeping the name simple and clear. at best you can knock it when they get into the double digits, but we are a while away from then.
if you dont want your product to be made fun of, then dont give people the opportunities by picking stupid high concept names. brand + version is all you are trying to communicate. ps + # is boring but functional.

You didn’t outline anything...
the xbox sx design isnt especially good. if you look at the teardown video and airflow animation you can see that:
  • the psu and optical disc drive block 1/3 of the square cross section.
  • the central chassis holds motherboard and io board thus blocking another 1/3.
  • the remaining 1/3 is open and feeds the heatsink, but is very long.
Buildzoid has a video on the rtx3000 cooler and explains the issues. long pathway fin stacks are bad for temperature differential. additionally the only fan inside is sucking from the top rather than blowing, so the pressure/velocity at the finstack will be less meaning dust buildup will be worse.
it only seems impressive because the corsair One has a similar shape/layout. but the One also has a giant water rad and mesh sides. the sexbox design is fine for its much lower power demands, but it doesnt come close to a pc.

the ps5 is a 120mm diameter centrifugal "blower" fan but is 45mm deep and double sided intake. the air ducting channels it through a wide finstack with a short depth. sony is running the apu hotter so they need the volume for airflow.
short version
long narrow finstack = bad, short wide stack = good
push-pull fan > push fan > pull fan > passive
pull = low flow speed = dust build up = bad
blocking 2/3 of your airflow path = bad


Channeling air via a vapor chamber is a more thought out design period. It’s nothing to do with size and everything to do with how you channel the air. Just sticking a huge heat sink on there and pushing a fan across it doesn’t impress me. Even Noctua fan designers think the series x is a clever cooling design for what it is.
vapor chambers and heatpipes operate on the same phase change effect, the only differences are geometry, heat aperture, transport distance, and manufacturing cost. the apus for both consoles are nearly the same size 328 vs 360 mm2. so there is no benefit in heat aperture and the memory coverage is meaningless given how cool they are running the system. that means the only thing they gain from a vapor chamber is mounting simplicity.
vapor chambers have more margin for multiple heat sources at higher temps and varying heat density but ms is running at fixed clocks so no need for a chamber there. you dont throw a vapor chamber on instead of a heatpipe because you want to, you do it because you have to in spite of the cost difference.

cooling effectiveness for 2 similar outputs and aperture will depend on 3 things:
  • heatsink/fin surface area for radiation
  • amount of cooling fluid (air)
  • temperature differential of fluid and radiation source. (ambient vs heat source)
the sexbox "flow" you keep fixating on only affects coolant flow rate while reducing fin surface area and diminishing temp differential along the longer path of the finstack. compressing fluid volume from the 120mm fan diameter cross-section down to the less than 1/3 of the cross-section opening at the stack increases fluid density but unless the fin exchange rate is better there is no benefit. if they had created custom ducting to expand the volume at some critical section to take advantage of bernoulli's principle to change one of the factors then you could claim they were doing something special, but they didnt. all they did was rounded a corner of the fan frame.

the seriesS teardown shows that they are running the 120mm fan in a pull configuration with a large-mass extruded sink with criminally narrow pathways. if they can get away with what is functionally barely better than semi passive cooling, then there was never some massive engineering challenge in cooling it.

the ps5 is using a 120x45mm centrifugal with actual moulded ducting with curved bends to smooth laminar flow. the centrifugal fan has way more margin for ramping speed/flow-volume since the ducting neutralizes high rpm turbulent flow variations.

@cmdr im not trying to bust your balls for the giggles.
you are making claims based on the looks of each system based on your understanding. but the visual differences in each system show specific mathematically demonstrable principles that say the sony system is doing far more to cool the apu. the xbox general layout at best, gets credit for being designed to serve double duty by fitting into a server rack and an alexa imatator appliance.
the cooling is nothing new beyond its choice to go in a pull configuration. they used a vapor chamber on the xbone so it's not like they saw the tdp of the next gen and suddenly realized they had to step up their cooling solution.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
blocking 2/3 of your airflow path = bad

Given that airflow is handled under fluid dynamics, wouldn't the amount of flow and direction changes matter far more than blockages? It's like how Linus Tech Tips threw a ton of crap into a case to see how much it took to make an appreciable difference on temperatures based off the old wives tale that bad cable management would affect temperatures. It's also the opposite problem that I had with my old Thermaltake Core X9 case. That case is big and is meant for water cooling, and that's how I used it. Although, I still had fans to help provide some flow to motherboard components and such, but the M.2 drive had massive temperature spikes (easily hitting its limit of 90% of max TDP of 70C). The reason? The case was too voluminous for the amount of airflow/pressure. At one point, I just stood a 120mm fan upright near the bottom of the motherboard, and that helped tremendously.
 
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simas

Senior member
Oct 16, 2005
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I'm such a luddite. All I still want from any of these devices is: insert disc, play game. I do not need any other menu or apps or accounts or friends lists or trophies or streaming or whatever excessive garbage. (yes, I know I'm the one person)

press power, goes to individual game menu, done!

You are not alone. I also find it too much of good things type of interface, too much in my face overloaded with information to the point it is actually helping me less vs more.. However I hope eventually I will learn to ignore it or they can come up with options to tone that down to something more spartan and simple. I want a gaming experience that resolve really about stories and characters, I play single person. I dont care about trophies, friends, online play ,etc. I also have better ways to chat with those I care about that do not involve home console.
 
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Ciber

Platinum Member
Nov 20, 2000
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the xbox sx design isnt especially good. if you look at the teardown video and airflow animation you can see that:
  • the psu and optical disc drive block 1/3 of the square cross section.
  • the central chassis holds motherboard and io board thus blocking another 1/3.
  • the remaining 1/3 is open and feeds the heatsink, but is very long.
Buildzoid has a video on the rtx3000 cooler and explains the issues. long pathway fin stacks are bad for temperature differential. additionally the only fan inside is sucking from the top rather than blowing, so the pressure/velocity at the finstack will be less meaning dust buildup will be worse.
it only seems impressive because the corsair One has a similar shape/layout. but the One also has a giant water rad and mesh sides. the sexbox design is fine for its much lower power demands, but it doesnt come close to a pc.

the ps5 is a 120mm diameter centrifugal "blower" fan but is 45mm deep and double sided intake. the air ducting channels it through a wide finstack with a short depth. sony is running the apu hotter so they need the volume for airflow.

You don't know what you're talking about. The fan does not suck from the top, it blows air out the top that it sucks in from the bottom.

xbox-series-x-air-flow.jpg.

The xbox one was quieter than the ps4, the xbox one x was quieter than the ps4 pro. These are facts. So far the design of the Series X looks cleaner and not overcomplicated as usual with Sony's products, which is very clear to see if you look at both teardowns.


Here's Digital Foundry doing thermal testing, notice the air blowing out of the top:

Enjoy!
 
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Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
You don't know what you're talking about. The fan does not suck from the top, it blows air out the top that it sucks in from the bottom.

I believe you're saying the same thing. My interpretation of his post was that the system sucks the air through the system from a fan located at the top.
 

Ciber

Platinum Member
Nov 20, 2000
2,531
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91
I believe you're saying the same thing. My interpretation of his post was that the system sucks the air through the system from a fan located at the top.


Should we even be taking this guy seriously? He’s citing a 12 year old YouTuber that’s into overclocking as a reference for why Microsoft’s design built by a team of engineers is not good. Can’t make this shit up. The fact is a bunch of people have Series X out in the wild using them in their homes and offices and they are running cool and quiet. Far as I know no third parties have any PS5’s out there that can tell us the same thing.

b6f67d3dc95380ab78712bcf213a15dc.jpg
 
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Commodus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2004
9,206
6,799
136
Should we even be taking this guy seriously? He’s citing a 12 year old YouTuber that’s into overclocking as a reference for why Microsoft’s design built by a team of engineers is not good. Can’t make this shit up. The fact is a bunch of people have Series X out in the wild using them in their homes and offices and they are running cool and quiet. Far as I know no third parties have any PS5’s out there that can tell us the same thing.

b6f67d3dc95380ab78712bcf213a15dc.jpg

The PS5 hands-on features from Japan suggested Sony's console was quiet — not sure about cool. But it seems like the days of consoles that sound like jet turbines might be over, at least for now.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
52,834
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The PS5 hands-on features from Japan suggested Sony's console was quiet — not sure about cool. But it seems like the days of consoles that sound like jet turbines might be over, at least for now.
Yeah they said it was cool to the touch and quiet.

Two things that matter nada to me personally.
 

gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
3,654
980
136
You don't know what you're talking about. The fan does not suck from the top, it blows air out the top that it sucks in from the bottom.

View attachment 32045.

The xbox one was quieter than the ps4, the xbox one x was quieter than the ps4 pro. These are facts. So far the design of the Series X looks cleaner and not overcomplicated as usual with Sony's products, which is very clear to see if you look at both teardowns.
suck from the top is a relative term to the position of the cpu not the case, the air is being pulled/suck from above the cpu as opposed to a push configuration from below. if i was saying what you think i am saying, i would have said it was a push configuration blowing down. i was already saying what you posted.

Should we even be taking this guy seriously? He’s citing a 12 year old YouTuber that’s into overclocking as a reference for why Microsoft’s design built by a team of engineers is not good. Can’t make this shit up. The fact is a bunch of people have Series X out in the wild using them in their homes and offices and they are running cool and quiet. Far as I know no third parties have any PS5’s out there that can tell us the same thing.

b6f67d3dc95380ab78712bcf213a15dc.jpg
buildzoid is in his 20's, is an electrical engineer, a worldclass level overclocker for cpu and gpu, shunt mods cards for the fun of it, is the one gamersnexus calls when they want to know if a motherboard/vrm is any good, and he is flown to taiwan/china by msi, gigabyte, asus to advise on how they should build their mb vrms. if the only way you can discount his knowledge is to make fun of how young he looks it just shows how little validity your arguments have.

here go learn something
 

gorobei

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2007
3,654
980
136
Given that airflow is handled under fluid dynamics, wouldn't the amount of flow and direction changes matter far more than blockages? It's like how Linus Tech Tips threw a ton of crap into a case to see how much it took to make an appreciable difference on temperatures based off the old wives tale that bad cable management would affect temperatures. It's also the opposite problem that I had with my old Thermaltake Core X9 case. That case is big and is meant for water cooling, and that's how I used it. Although, I still had fans to help provide some flow to motherboard components and such, but the M.2 drive had massive temperature spikes (easily hitting its limit of 90% of max TDP of 70C). The reason? The case was too voluminous for the amount of airflow/pressure. At one point, I just stood a 120mm fan upright near the bottom of the motherboard, and that helped tremendously.
the blockages in this case is affecting total volume of coolant.

so cooling in the case of air coolers is a function of
1)heat output as a function of surface area of the sink and the transfer rate of the material its made out of.
2) the amount of coolant fluid and the temperature difference between it and the sink.

as a hypothetical to demonstrate:
you have a soc on a raspberry pi sized pcb to which you attach a tower style cooler with a 9cm wide x 9cm deep x 9cm tall heatpipe finstack made of aluminum. you then have a 10cm x 10cm x10cm cube cup filled with 20 degC water. you flip the pcb upside down on a rig that can lower just the finstack into the cup of water. you run the soc and lower it into the water for some time increment. the finstack transfers the heat output to the water raising the temp to 50c. you raise the fin/soc/pcb up and a 2nd cup of 10x10x10 of 20c water comes down the conveyor belt and you repeat the water heating process.

the 10x10x10 cup of water is 1000 cubic cm or liter. that liter of water at 20c has a fixed number of kCalories it can absorb from the sink finstack. if you reduce the height of the cup and sink by 2/3, the cup is (10x10x3.3) and the finstack is (9x9x3). you have reduced the amount of coolant and thus the thermal capacity of the coolant fluid by 66% and the thermal transfer rate also goes down since you have less fins and less surface area. you could change the finstack material to copper and gain 40% more transfer to make up for the surface area loss but it is more expensive and heavier.
in this example the cup represents the interactible volume the cooler has with the coolant fluid. reducing the size of the volume has a directly proportional affect on the transfer rate and the upper limit of the coolant to absorb heat.
[it is the difference between throwing a 12oz can vs a 1liter bottle of soda on a hot skillet. which one is going to cool it more?]

by going from the 120mm x120mm cross section of the se:X to the maybe 100mm x 25mm narrow passageway, ms has reduced the max interactible amount of fluid.

lets go back to our inverted sink setup. we've reduced the height of the sink and cup to 1/3, but to make up for the cross section loss we can extend the length to 3x to compensate. so we make the heatpipe array in to something like the noctua nh d14 with pipes running to 3 separate finstacks with 9x9x3 size each (total dimensions 9x28x3). we set up our conveyor belt with 10x10x3.3 cups spaced so the 3 finstacks can fit into 3 of them at the same time.
we turn on the soc and we start transferring heat to cups 1,2,3 heating the water from 20c to 50c in each. we lift the rig, advance the conveyor line, lower the rig, and start transferring heat. cups 2 and 3 go from 50c ->80c while cup4 goes from 20->50. we advance the line again, lower, and run the soc. cup 3 now goes from 80c->100c and hits the thermal absorption limit of the water, cup 4 goes 50->80, cup 5 goes 20->50.

this is the problem with long path heatsink setups(blower gpu cards). some parts of the sink gets to work with 20c coolant while other parts only interact with 80c coolant. you have to run integral math to get the finer gradations but the principle holds.

by lowering the internal volume of the air passageway of the se:X the coolant becomes less effective. now water as a fluid is uncompressible and stickier than air so the dynamics are different. and that is a good thing, because it allows you increase coolant flow rate to make up for the coolants reduced ability to absorb heat. but ramping the fan rpm is probably going to be limited to keep noise down.

so assuming you are committed to the form factor, you have other options. increase the depth of the single 120mm fan to increase airflow, stick another 120mm push fan on the other end to increase airflow, or add ducting and extra length to take the 120x120 passage and squeeze it down along a gentle curvature with laminar flow to take advantage of bernoulli's principle to increase airspeed at the finstack and an expansion section to the ducting at the exit to take advantage of the heat expanding the air volume in a quasi scavenging effect. MS did none of these things.

instead of double stacking the motherboard and the io board on a 30mm thick chassis, they could have mounted the board edges at 90deg forming a L that lined 2 sides of the case and opened up more of the internal volume for more air/coolant.

the air path matters but it is the air temp and speed at the sink that will determine how much heat is rejected from the system. at idle the se:X in a vertical orientation is a great design for a passive cooler situation taking advantage of the stacking(aka chimney effect)cooling with the fan forcing the effect in the horizontal orientation. but again this is not a great setup for dusty environments.



as for your thermaltake x9, yeah running all water would be an issue. buildzoid once went over the watts generated by the other components around a vrm dimm and m.2 slots as an aside. anything with thru hole pins was passing 3 to 10-ish watts (or some surprising number)to the copper layers in the motherboard. that can add up with all the smd components around a module.
instead of 1 big 230mm fan at the front of the case what they needed to do was mount 4x 140mm fans in a 2 by 2 square on the front and back of the case to make a single flow that filled the entire cross-section. there is a thing in cooling where you go for total volume replacement every couple of seconds. so every cubic cm is pulled out with no deadspots or nooks where eddys could form. this requires very minimal blockage. i guess you could have the 2by2 140mm chamber for the motherboard and the rads in a separate chamber with their own fans. i've seen some custom cases with front to back flow.
 

Ciber

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Nov 20, 2000
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suck from the top is a relative term to the position of the cpu not the case, the air is being pulled/suck from above the cpu as opposed to a push configuration from below. if i was saying what you think i am saying, i would have said it was a push configuration blowing down. i was already saying what you posted.


buildzoid is in his 20's, is an electrical engineer, a worldclass level overclocker for cpu and gpu, shunt mods cards for the fun of it, is the one gamersnexus calls when they want to know if a motherboard/vrm is any good, and he is flown to taiwan/china by msi, gigabyte, asus to advise on how they should build their mb vrms. if the only way you can discount his knowledge is to make fun of how young he looks it just shows how little validity your arguments have.

here go learn something

My apologies to you and mr Buildzoid, I had no idea this young man was god's gift to engineering cooling solutions for all products. No idea why he's wasting his time collecting pennies on patreon instead of replacing Microsoft's engineers and making some real money and shame on Microsoft for overlooking his genius. The fact is the Series X is out in the wild and its cooling solution is keeping the machine running within specs, cool, quiet and not crashing. If you have evidence of this not being the case, feel free to share it.

No one is going to overclock or overvolt their Series X.
 
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