The mid-generation refresh for video game consoles is an old story, one that can be traced back to the PS2 days, when Sony launched a "thin" version of its console back in 2006. It's something that's been repeated for every console generation since then. So now that we're two years into the current console generation, fans are eagerly awaiting what Sony has in store for us this time around. However, according to many reports, it seems that we will not be getting a mid-gen update in the classic sense.

Instead, what we get are subtle improvements in chip design and the thermal interface, while keeping the larger form factor unchanged. Teardowns from Youtuber Austin Evans and Angstronomics show us that with the latest model of the PS5 (CFI-1202), Sony has completely redesigned the inside, going for a smaller heatsink, different SSD mounting surface and a complete redesign of the original motherboard.

But the differences don't stop there, as Angtronimics shows us in its breakdown. The new Playstation 5 CFI-1202 is also revealed to have a slightly different APU which is rumored to be the 6nm equivalent of the AMD Zen 2 CPU codenamed "Oberon Plus".

This transition from a 7nm to a 6nm chip has led to a situation where the new PS5 variant has 18.8% more transistor density than the previous iteration and a form factor that has shrunk from 300 square millimeters to just 270 square millimeters. These improvements combined should increase efficiency and reduce power consumption. We can say that this seems to be largely true, as Evans showed in his video, where the new PS5 consumed 11 watts less than the original "1000" model.