Matt Perks Puts Together the World's First Sony PlayStation 5 Slim — with Liquid Cooling
Using a custom copper water block, an external PSU, and plenty of elbow grease, Perks has the smallest PS5 around.
Matt Perks, host of the DIY Perks YouTube channel, has put together a Sony PlayStation 5 with a difference: it takes up a fraction of the original design's bulk, relying on liquid cooling to keep things ticking over in a small form factor rebuild.
"Historically Sony have always followed their main PlayStation console launches with slimmer versions about three to four years after their initial release," Perks explains. "As their latest console, the PS5, is literally their largest ever a slim version is sorely needed — but as it's so new I think it's unfortunately going to be a while yet until we see a more compact version. however, I think it's going to be possible to make the present version slimmer."
To prove it, Perks set about beating Sony to the punch with a PS5 Slim of his own. After stripping the outer housing from an off-the-shelf PS5, Perks stripped out the heatsink and fan assembly used to cool the console's hardware — replacing it with a custom-made full-coverage water block for a liquid cooling system.
"I've got three thicknesses [of copper sheet] here in order to make a copper sandwich, with the middle layer being the thickest at three millimeters," Perks explains in his video. "For some reason copper in sheet form is ridiculously expensive, and these sheets alone cost almost as much as the PS5 itself."
After creating the copper water block by soldering the layers together, Perks added copper bridging strips to other components and heat pipes to others before moving on to one of the biggest space-savers: Replacing the internal power supply with an external brick. With pumps, a reservoir, and a slim radiator added, Perks' build was nearly complete - requiring only a sleek rectangular housing, a power button, moved Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas, and some LEDs for good measure.
"One thing you'll notice with this build is that it's taken a lot of time and effort even just to get to this point," Perks says of the two-months-plus project, "and even though I've mostly used hand tools I doubt that many of you are going to put the time and energy into copying what I've done here."
More details are available in Perks' full build video.