PS5 Additional Internal SSD Storage - Heatsink or Standard?

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

Whats everyone's thoughts to Heatsink or standard? People are saying it seems to not make much diffeence but interested if anyone has already got additional SSD storage as these games are getting bigger and bigger by the day!

 

I think i'll have to save to get a 2TB one because I fear 1TB will just fill up really quickly with most of the latest games nearing 100GB or way more in some instances.

 

Cheers!

[cyberninja2601 1,106]

 

A solid state HD should consume very little power, therefore a Heatsink is just a money grab that seems unnecessary to me. 

[NCA-Paendrag 2,758]

I have a 2tb external HD, works like a charm.

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

1 hour ago, NCA-Paendrag said:

I have a 2tb external HD, works like a charm.

 

Ah yes but thats an external Hard Drive so it won't play PS5 games directly from it. There's space for another SSD to slot so you can play PS5 games straight away.

[NCA-Paendrag 2,758]

9 minutes ago, GazzaGarratt said:

 

Ah yes but thats an external Hard Drive so it won't play PS5 games directly from it. There's space for another SSD to slot so you can play PS5 games straight away.

Really? It asks me where I want to save, internal or external.. guess I have to check down the line if/when it becomes an issue 🙂

[Greboth 2,721]

13 hours ago, cyberninja2601 said:

 

A solid state HD should consume very little power, therefore a Heatsink is just a money grab that seems unnecessary to me. 

 

It’s more complicated than that though as you can overheat an NVMe and it will throttle performance to cool itself down.

 

They don’t draw much power but the heat is focused to controller and memory.  Constant and large read write operations will overheat a drive without a cooler.  Gaming isn’t quite that intensive but the drive will certainly get warm - though warm is actually a good thing.  It’s also further muddied that gen3 drives aren’t too bad but gen4 drives get significantly hotter.

 

If memory serves the PS5 is gen4 so I’d say get a cooler.  I don’t know how well the PS5 cools the nvme but the degradation and performance loss is considerably worse if they get too hot than a little cooler.

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

10 hours ago, NCA-Paendrag said:

Really? It asks me where I want to save, internal or external.. guess I have to check down the line if/when it becomes an issue 🙂

 

Its because when you have no space left for a PS5 game, you can transfer one of your PS5 games to your external HD for 'storage'. If you want to play it again, you then need to transfer it back to the PS5 internal SSD - effectively saving a redownload that would take longer. It still takes time to transfer it from one storage to another which is the PITA if you play a number of games or need a few games ready on demand when people are around to play it. With 3 games over 100GB your space is pretty much taken on the internal SSD which is frustrating to say the least.

 

14 hours ago, cyberninja2601 said:

 

A solid state HD should consume very little power, therefore a Heatsink is just a money grab that seems unnecessary to me. 

 

Thanks Pat, most feedback on reviews say the heatsink doesn't matter too much but clearly parting with a lot of money made me ask the question here.

 

7 minutes ago, Greboth said:

 

It’s more complicated than that though as you can overheat an NVMe and it will throttle performance to cool itself down.

 

They don’t draw much power but the heat is focused to controller and memory.  Constant and large read write operations will overheat a drive without a cooler.  Gaming isn’t quite that intensive but the drive will certainly get warm - though warm is actually a good thing.  It’s also further muddied that gen3 drives aren’t too bad but gen4 drives get significantly hotter.

 

If memory serves the PS5 is gen4 so I’d say get a cooler.  I don’t know how well the PS5 cools the nvme but the degradation and performance loss is considerably worse if they get too hot than a little cooler.

 

Cheers @Greboth, I suppose the question is it worth an extra £50 just for a heatsink as that what I was trying to weigh up. Can I add one afterwards if I wanted to?

[MrBiron 1,453]

Sony recommend going with a heatsink so I'd get one just in case (I got one for my SSD that I put in). They don't cost that much and I'd rather spend an extra £10-20 than end up knackering a £200-300 SSD. You also need to check you're buying a heatsink that will fit in the slot for the SSD. I also don't think 2TB is needed: I put a 1TB in mine and haven't got close to filling that or the internal drive. Unless you're one of these people that keeps every single game on your PS5 even if you haven't played them for 2 years. Are you one of these people @GazzaGarratt 🤨 

[MrBiron 1,453]

This is what my 2 SSD's are like. The PS5 uses better compression for storage than the PS4 so games don't use as much space. 

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

5 minutes ago, MrBiron said:

Unless you're one of these people that keeps every single game on your PS5 even if you haven't played them for 2 years. Are you one of these people @GazzaGarratt 🤨 

 

Maybe...😅 I have a 4TB External because if you want me to play Rainbow 6 or some other random game on the fly, I need the space and it virtually ready!

 

I think the issue is PS5 games of late are super big right now so it helps having a larger one because the next AAA games that are 200GB are just around the corner....

[Luseth 1,949]

12 minutes ago, GazzaGarratt said:

 

Maybe...😅 I have a 4TB External because if you want me to play Rainbow 6 or some other random game on the fly, I need the space and it virtually ready!

 

I think the issue is PS5 games of late are super big right now so it helps having a larger one because the next AAA games that are 200GB are just around the corner....

 

They tend to be so badly compressed. Something to bare in mind though, more often than not games that have ps4 and ps5 releases, it is the ps5 version that tends to take up less storage. From a couple of years ago but just found this online -

But yeah the issues is developers being lazy I think more often than not resulting in large game sizes (in some instances it's about money, suspicion is that COD already has a shit tonne of assets in the game and they flick a button and all of a sudden we can buy them), I mean Call of duty is always over 200gb yet they can put games like Cyberpunk in 150gb and Hogwarts in 80gb. 

 

[Luseth 1,949]

To go back to the original post, I have a 500gb drive in my PS5 with a heatsink and I would tend to be over cautious and get a heatsink than not get one and face issues down the road.

 

As for size, I have found the 500gb to be plenty in addition to the internal and I do have some biggish games on there like COD, Hogwarts, Fallout 76 and fifa and such. If I had spare cash yeah maybe I would go bigger but I don't find I play more than 3 or 4 different games in a week because I just don't have the time too anyway.

[crispymorgan 1,054]

I just use gigabit internet to redownload games as and when. 😎

[Greboth 2,721]

1 hour ago, GazzaGarratt said:

Cheers @Greboth, I suppose the question is it worth an extra £50 just for a heatsink as that what I was trying to weigh up. Can I add one afterwards if I wanted to?

 

They're not that expensive are they?  Admittedly a very quick google but they seem to be only £10-£20 more. 

[MrBiron 1,453]

1 hour ago, GazzaGarratt said:

 

Maybe...😅 I have a 4TB External because if you want me to play Rainbow 6 or some other random game on the fly, I need the space and it virtually ready!

 

In order to play Siegeypoos on the PS5 you'd need to download the PS5 version and then that can only be run from an internal drive 😝

[cyberninja2601 1,106]

3 hours ago, Greboth said:

 

It’s more complicated than that though as you can overheat an NVMe and it will throttle performance to cool itself down.

 

They don’t draw much power but the heat is focused to controller and memory.  Constant and large read write operations will overheat a drive without a cooler.  Gaming isn’t quite that intensive but the drive will certainly get warm - though warm is actually a good thing.  It’s also further muddied that gen3 drives aren’t too bad but gen4 drives get significantly hotter.

 

If memory serves the PS5 is gen4 so I’d say get a cooler.  I don’t know how well the PS5 cools the nvme but the degradation and performance loss is considerably worse if they get too hot than a little cooler.

 

 

 NVMe drives have an optimal operating temperature that is much higher than a regular HDD. So if they get too cold they actually become less efficient. So you will want them to run around 40+ degrees celsius.

 

However they will also begin to thermally throttle when they get too hot, which is around 90-105 degrees Celsius depending on the brand.

 

So unless you are doing crazy amounts of non stop writing to the drives (like 30 mins+) you are unlikely to see any performance throttling. Given that what is on the drive is the game information you are going to be reading all the time. That's why an SDD is also great for a PC operating system and SW because after you install you mostly read. 

 

Solid state drives are also made of FLASH memory. Flash memory has a limited number of writes for its lifetime so that last thing is you want to do is write to it a lot which would cause the throttling. 

 

 

PCIe Gen4 NVMe is a different story as these seem to run a lot hotter, so that is why you will see them coming with giant heatsinks pre-installed on Gen4 drives.  I never checked the interface for the PS5

 

I would check what sony has to say

 

 

[crippled_viper 258]

On 2/27/2023 at 12:01 PM, GazzaGarratt said:

Whats everyone's thoughts to Heatsink or standard? People are saying it seems to not make much diffeence but interested if anyone has already got additional SSD storage as these games are getting bigger and bigger by the day!

 

I think i'll have to save to get a 2TB one because I fear 1TB will just fill up really quickly with most of the latest games nearing 100GB or way more in some instances.

 

Cheers!

I just installed the 2TB SSD with the heatsink today.

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

23 minutes ago, crippled_viper said:

I just installed the 2TB SSD with the heatsink today.

 

Thats the same in mine. Heard a few with heat issues over time and didn't really want that with my PS5 if I'm honest.

[crippled_viper 258]

1 hour ago, GazzaGarratt said:

 

Thats the same in mine. Heard a few with heat issues over time and didn't really want that with my PS5 if I'm honest.

This new WD_Black has an improved heatsink. Check it out. Maybe the older version was efficient