PS4 Pro Cooling Mod

[MS Eierfeile]

First of all: Yes I am guilty of gaming on a PC and a Playstation. Don't wanna miss out on Final Fantasy, affordable VR and Couch-Coop

 

But my PS4 Pro is 4 years old, got louder over time and especially more demanding games make it sound like a jet engine.

 

 

When playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider for about 15 minutes the Sound Level reached over 65 decibels! 

 

 

I know this measurement isn't perfectly reliable but it is good enough as a comparison and way better than with those decibel-meter apps

 

So anyways I decided to do something about that. I did my research, went shopping and here is what I did:

 

First of all I consulted ifixit.com on how to strip it down to the MB. Then I prepared the APU with nail polish before applying liquid metal instead of the cheap thermal compound as der8auer taught us

 

 

I used Coolaboratory Liquid Ultra since it is a little thicker than Liquid Pro and more conveniant to apply.

 

 

 

 

The mosfets got new PHOBYA XT thermal pads.

 

 

Now to the other side of the MB where the eight 512 MB RAM chips are located. Those got solid copper heatsinks.

 

 

In order for the fan to cool them I had to dremel out a portion of the metal plate that covers the MB.

 

 

Now I cut a few holes in top and bottom cover on which I mounted 120mm BeQuiet Pure Wings 2 fans with Aquatuning dust covers.  One on the top to push fresh air into the stock cooler. And one on the bottom to cool the RAM and the back of the MB under the APU.

 

 

To power the fans i soldered a two-pin fan cable directly to the 12V fan controller of the PS4 Pro.

 

 

To still be able to control the fanspeed I used the Noctua NA-FC1 fan controller and hooked the Pure Wings up to it.

The cables mostly run inside the PS4.

 

I asked a friend to print me four feet for the PS4 to give the bottom fan enough clearance.

 

 

While I was at it I also replaced the slow HDD with a Samsung QVO 1 TB SSD.

 

 

So now all there's left to do is wait for a thunderstorm and yell:

"IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIIIIIIVE!!!"

 

 

 

 

 

Later I found out that the whole build including the new feet was too wide for the old spot on my subwoofer

 

So I repurposed the feet and positioned the PS4 in the upright position. And I gotta say after the whole mod I like it way better that way.

 

 

I can tell you that the result is significantly quieter than before and not annoying at all.  Noticeable at best and that's all I was aiming for. After the same 15 minutes of playing SotTR I measured a sound level of only 51 decibels. That's 14 less that before! 

 

 

And by the way: the SSD literally cut my loading times in half. Before it took about 90 seconds from dashboard to start playing in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Now it's 40 seconds!

 

So that's about it. Thanks a lot for sticking with me until that point and feel free to ask if you want to know anything.

 

Cheers from Switzerland

Martin

[centurion_08]

Looks pretty darn good. Me like.

[Velcade]

That thing is wild looking!  Nice work. 

[Totallycasual]

I love these types of mods, especially the ones where they just say fuck it and slap a massive PC CPU cooler on the APU lol 

 

I really hope the PS5 is a lot quieter. 

[Warin]

3 hours ago, Totallycasual said:

I love these types of mods, especially the ones where they just say fuck it and slap a massive PC CPU cooler on the APU lol 

 

I really hope the PS5 is a lot quieter. 

I am actually shocked that Sony has not shown the PS5's final form yet.  Last gen they really took it to Microsoft, but this time it is like they are not even trying.  I have an X and a Pro on my desk, and the Pro at idle is often louder than my X under load.  The Series X looks to be taking advanced cooling to a whole new level beyond that.  Sony's Days of Play is June 3rd to June 17th this year, hopefully that means they will have some big news in that same time period.

And I totally love your cooling solution for your ailing Pro.  Ingenious! 

[Totallycasual]

9 minutes ago, Warin said:

I am actually shocked that Sony has not shown the PS5's final form yet.

 

Sony absolutely crushed it this generation with their focus on 1st party titles and single player games in particular, they're in a powerful position right now so they can afford to sit back and watch MS dribble out info over the next few months.  Sony has two more 1st party games to get out the door and some final PS4 units to move but once TLOUII and GoT are out the door, they'll start really hammering the PS5 marketing campaign. 

[MS Eierfeile]

4 hours ago, Totallycasual said:

I love these types of mods, especially the ones where they just say fuck it and slap a massive PC CPU cooler on the APU lol 

I thought about that. Just mounting a Dark Rock Pro which looks out the top like a freaking musclecar big block onto the APU

The problem is, that the Stock cooler also cools the PSU which runs insanely hot in the PS4 Pro! One guy watercooled his PS4 Pro but had to build an external enclosure with a 80mm fan for the PSU.

[Totallycasual]

Lets hope that no such shenanigans are necessary for the Playstation 5

[MS Eierfeile]

1 hour ago, Warin said:

And I totally love your cooling solution for your ailing Pro.  Ingenious! 

Thanks a lot. And it works perfectly as long as the Pro has enough room to exhaust the heat of the PSU in the back.

The BeQuiet fans run at about 40% speed so that they are about as quiet as the stock fan is now.

[Warin]

11 hours ago, Totallycasual said:

 

Sony absolutely crushed it this generation with their focus on 1st party titles and single player games in particular, they're in a powerful position right now so they can afford to sit back and watch MS dribble out info over the next few months.  Sony has two more 1st party games to get out the door and some final PS4 units to move but once TLOUII and GoT are out the door, they'll start really hammering the PS5 marketing campaign. 

I disagree.  Even die hard Sony fans are getting tired of knowing virtually nothing about the new console.  Sony is basically letting Microsoft control the dialogue about the next gen consoles.  Combine that with not being able to claim that the PS5 will be the most powerful in any arena but the storage throughput puts them behind before things even get started for them.  They have made some frankly baffling decisions.

[Totallycasual]

3 hours ago, Warin said:

I disagree.  Even die hard Sony fans are getting tired of knowing virtually nothing about the new console.  Sony is basically letting Microsoft control the dialogue about the next gen consoles.  Combine that with not being able to claim that the PS5 will be the most powerful in any arena but the storage throughput puts them behind before things even get started for them.  They have made some frankly baffling decisions.

It's frustrating but as i said, they need to get their last two major PS4 exclusives out the door before they start a marketing campaign that will ultimately make people start to wonder if they should hold off on their software and hardware purchases, MS can come out early because frankly, they have no first party stuff that anyone's super interested in outside of Halo lol  

 

On the power side of things, raw power isn't everything in the console space, raw teraflops and benchmarks might rule the PC space but it means jack shit to console players, they go where the games are.  Look at this current generation, MS had the most powerful console and what good did it do them?  They got destroyed on every front.  

 

After TLOUII is out things are really going to pick up. 

[MS Eierfeile]

Minor update. Changed orientation of PS4 and measured final sound level

[Thready]

Damn man that's a pretty good job. I'd be way too scared but I also don't have the expertise you have. 

 

 

On 5/23/2020 at 3:09 AM, Totallycasual said:

Lets hope that no such shenanigans are necessary for the Playstation 5

I doubt it'll be that bad for the PS5. The PS4 Pro was a rushed together development and they had few options for cooling. They basically doubled the GPU part of the APU at the same die size in order to make it compatible with games. I feel they had very few options for cooling.

[MS Eierfeile]

3 hours ago, Thready said:

I'd be way too scared but I also don't have the expertise you have. 

It's actually not that difficult. Ifixit tells you how to dissasamble and (most importantly) reassamble. Der8auer explaines how to prepare the CPU (APU) and apply liquid metal. The soldering isn't that difficult so the most difficult part over all is cutting rather round holes for the fans

But I sure would have thought twice if I still had a valid warranty

[Sorenson]

Holly crap... I thought putting liquid metal on my ps4 Pro was crazy... but this is a whole new level. 
 

Im not sure if it’s advisable, but I put nail polish and then nonconductive thermal tape around the APU for a little more protection against the liquid metal. 

[MS Eierfeile]

26 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

Im not sure if it’s advisable, but I put nail polish and then nonconductive thermal tape around the APU for a little more protection against the liquid metal. 

It's actually very advisable.

I did that too with my laptop. But here with the PS4 I feel like the nailpolish will do the job since the Liquid Ultra from Coolaboratory is... well... a little less liquid than most liquid metals and the border if the APU is quite high.

[Sorenson]

1 hour ago, MS Eierfeile said:

It's actually very advisable.

I did that too with my laptop. But here with the PS4 I feel like the nailpolish will do the job since the Liquid Ultra from Coolaboratory is... well... a little less liquid than most liquid metals and the border if the APU is quite high.

good to know! I used conductonaut and wanted to be careful. 

[Dgbj86]

I not being a ass, but u got to be the smartest dump person I know, u build a badass modded ps4 pro, but u keep it on your “subwoofer”, I sub box vibrates a lot and the last place I want to put ur console on. Your basically vibrating the ps4 apart, not good for any console 

[TheInvisible_Dude]

@Lord Valdomero check this.