Why Doesn‘t the PS5 Have 1TB of Storage? A Hardware Design Deep Dive

As excited as gamers were to get their hands on a PlayStation 5, one question lingered about Sony‘s next-gen console – why only 825GB of storage? With game install sizes ballooning up to 100GB+ these days, an odd 825GB seems far too cramped for a modern system.

We understand the frustration. As players ourselves, we expect new consoles to push every technical boundary, especially around performance. So why didn‘t Sony go all out and equip the PS5 with a massive 1TB or even 2TB SSD out of the box?

Well, shoehorning a cutting-edge solid state drive with 1TB capacity into the PS5 was more complex than it seems. There were tough engineering decisions around cooling, power, size constraints, and cost control. We‘ll dig into the challenges Sony‘s hardware team faced.

Building a Cool, Compact Console

Sony obsessed over giving the PlayStation 5 a bold, futuristic design that runs cool and quiet. They achieved an eye-catching form by sourcing an advanced 120mm fan and developing a specialized cooling system spanning the entire internal layout.

But cooling gets far trickier as SSD size and thus heat generation goes up. Getting usable capacity to 1TB would‘ve required a larger drive pulling more wattage, enough to overwhelm the PS5‘s sleek cooling array. Louder fans or a bigger console would‘ve been necessary concessions.

Power: The Bane of Bigger SSDs

Speaking of power, the PS5 utilizes a cutting-edge solid state drive rated to 7GB/s or higher transfer speeds. Achieving these blistering rates requires not just blazing fast NAND chips but also serious wattage – more than the PS5‘s motherboard design allocated to storage.

1TB models of these PCIe 4.0 SSDs demand upwards of 10-15w sustained. That‘s already tight even for the 825GB drive Sony used, let alone 33% more capacity. More SSD storage would‘ve put the PS5‘s carefully balanced power budget under duress.

Pricing Out the Average Gamer

Cost kills consoles, and that ax swings even faster when using premium components like PCIe 4.0 SSDs. These drives carry a towering price premium over standard SSDs thanks to bleeding-edge controllers and NAND needed to feed data faster than anything else out there.

At $125 for 500GB, next-gen storage still costs a staggering 3-4X more per gigabyte than typical SSDs. Even optimistic projections have 1TB PCIe 4.0 drives hovering around $230 through 2023. Sony couldn‘t stomach doubling down on an already expensive component.

Sony Gets Creative

Facing these hardware headaches, Sony got clever to make the most of the PS5‘s 825GB capacity. Advanced lossless compression sees the average PS5 game install shrink by 20-30% over PS4 titles on disk. 825GB starts hosting a lot more than it seems.

Kraken packs tons of visual detail in far smaller code, especially helping massive open world titles like Horizon Forbidden West trim install sizes. Sony also invested in optimized downloads that instantly install only a game‘s multiplayer if that‘s all you play. Little design choices that keep PS5 ownership viable for the masses given SSD barriers today.

Of course the door is open to upgrade storage down the road as gamers need it. Both USB external drives and internal NVMe SSDs are supported to give players flexibility growing their PS5. And in a few years as costs decline, count on a souped-up PS5 Pro rocking way beyond 825GB speeds.

At the end of the day, Sony pushed right against the bleeding edge developing the PlayStation 5 hardware. There were tough calls to make balancing innovation, practicality, and affordability. We hope understanding the challenges behind the storage decision makes 825GB sting less next time you‘re deleting games to make space. Now get out there and feed that monster some great new PS5 releases!