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What’s inside Sony’s PlayStation 4: Upgradeable hard drive, 8GB fast memory, internal power

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The Sony PlayStation 4's motherboard. Once the cover has been removed, this board pops out easily

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Corrected 10:30 a.m. Pacific

This might be a first: Instead of waiting for gadget butchers* like iFixit to post their own disassembly videos, Sony, (working with Wired) has published its own teardown of its upcoming PlayStation 4 — before the new console even hits the streets. Check out the screenshots and the video below.

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On the front of the PlayStation 4 are two USB 3.0 ports.
The PlayStation 4’s rear edge contains a plug for the power cord as well as ports for optical audio connectors, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, and an AUX connector for the PlayStation camera.
After removing just four screws, you can take the cover off the PlayStation 4 — and this is what you see inside. The fan is on the left, the optical drive on the right.
There’s a Bluetooth antenna mounted inside the PS4’s casing.
Remove a single screw and you can slide out the PlayStation 4’s internal hard drive. It’s a 500GB, 2.5-inch hard disk drive and can be replaced with any commercially available hard drive.
The PlayStation 4 has an optical drive, which can read DVDs and Blu-ray discs.
The power supply is incorporated into the body of the PlayStation 4, instead of in an external “brick.” “It wouldn’t be very convenient for our customers if there were a separate power supply unit,” Ootori says in this video, as if the last twenty years of Sony products hadn’t violated that exact principle.
The PlayStation 4 contains an x86 CPU core, but with a design customized by Sony.
The PlayStation 4 contains 16 GDDR5 memory modules surrounding the CPU, for a total of 8GB. The bandwidth of its graphics memory is is 176 Gbps (that’s how fast the GPU can access data from memory).
The PlayStation 4 contains an 85mm-diameter centrifugal fan, which directs airflow through the casing and cools the heat sink.
Two copper heat pipes help direct heat from the CPU to the heat sink. They also look pretty flashy.
The “mainframe” of the PlayStation 4 is the central piece of metal, shown here, on which the other components are mounted — including the massive-looking heat sink on the left.
The Sony PlayStation 4’s motherboard. Once the cover has been removed, this board pops out easily
Here’s the PlayStation 4’s secondary processor, which can continue network operations even when the system is in standby mode.
A rendering of the PS4 in wireframes, from a Wired video showing a teardown of the PS4.

The teardown is a savvy move, because it highlights the PS4’s upgradeability (you can also upgrade the PS3 with off-the-shelf hard drives), its high-end specs, and the elegance of its design.

It also makes it clear, to hardcore gamers, how much the PS4 has in common with a high-end PC gaming rig, right down the x86 processor, and the flashy heat sink and copper heat pipes.

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Wired published this video of Yasuhiro Ootori, the director of the engineering department at Sony Computer Entertainment, taking apart his new device. After about 30 seconds of unboxing, Ootori gets right down to the business of disassembling the PlayStation 4.

Just four screws hold together its outer casing, making repairs and upgrades easy. The catch: These screws are hidden underneath an external seal, which you have to peel off before you can access them. That means if someone has opened the case, you’ll be able to tell — whether you’re an individual buying a second-hand PS4 or a Sony repair rep trying to assess whether a console might be nonfunctioning due to user error.

* We say that lovingly. Actually, we love iFixit and look forward to seeing what repairability score it gives the PlayStation 4 when it comes out.

Correction 10:30 a.m. Pacific: The PS4 has 8GB of memory distributed across 16 GDDR5 modules, not 16GB.

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