Here’s why Sony’s PS5 is the greatest console you’ve ever seen...

• Sony’s PS5 is one of the greatest video game consoles of all time, and now we finally know why.
• According to one of the leading engineers behind the PlayStation 5, the fan determined the size of the console since one large fan was preferable to two smaller fans.
• Sony could have made a smaller console with two fans, but the PS5 might have been more expensive to manufacture and therefore would have cost more to retail.

Sony eventually showed us the design of the PS5 during the Future of Gaming event, but we asked almost as many questions as before. We still didn’t know what the price and when the games would be available on day one or what the UI would look like. Many of these puzzles have been solved, but this week we finally got an answer to the most important question of all: why is the PS5 so damn big?

In an interview with Nikkei Xtech On Tuesday, Yasuhiro Ootori, vice president of mechanical design at Sony Interactive Entertainment (who you may remember from that PS5 demolition video) stated that the fan is the culprit for the PS5’s sizeable bulk. Such an essential component was necessary to cool the mainboard.

According to Ootori, the fan in the PS5 is 45mm thick. That is thicker than the fan in the PS4 and PS4 Pro. The size of the fan determined the size of the console, as it is the largest component in the PS5 case by width. In the teardown video, we also looked at the motherboard that powers the PS5. The reason Sony decided to install a huge double-sided fan was because air was drawn in from both sides to cool the “A-side”. and the “B-side” of the board. On the B-side, the system isn’t installed on a chip, but Ootori says it still generates about as much heat as the PS4’s SoC.

“It was possible to make the PlayStation 5 smaller,” revealed Ootori Video Game Chronicle). “By implementing two fans, one for side A and side B, the size of the PlayStation 5 would have been reduced. However, there are of course additional costs associated with two fans. In addition, controlling the functionality of two fans is more difficult than just one. Given these additional obstacles, we decided to use a large fan to cool both sides of the motherboard. ”

In other words, the PS5 didn’t have to be as big as it ultimately was, but the unprecedented size was something Sony wanted to compromise on in order to build a console that was relatively affordable and so quiet and efficient. Had Sony chosen two fans instead of one, it would have been possible that the company could not have fetched $ 399 for the PS5 Digital Edition, which uses the same fan and motherboard as the standard PS5.