You may have seen reports warning you against placing your PS5 vertically, stating that you could damage your console and even brick it permanently. But there’s good reason to doubt these claims, and for one, I’m not going to change the way I use my console.
We’ve seen reports that the PS5 can get into trouble after standing for a long time. For example, @68logic (opens in new tab)who runs a repair shop in France says he’s seen a few cases repairing consoles where a potential seal rupture between the cooler and APU resulted in liquid metal leaking through the case and onto other components, ruining the console .
Don’t stand your Ps5 upright here is the result the liquid is moving and the freezes are there pic.twitter.com/A4Do3TkcXkJanuary 4, 2023
You’re not the only one claiming to have seen this error. youtube TheCod3r (opens in new tab) opened up a PS5 Digital Edition console that he needed to fix and said the console would not boot. He spotted a metal spill from the APU and says the spill was due to a design flaw.
Another thing to consider is the damage caused by the user. Constant movement of a console can cause internal damage and part movement. So if you frequently switch your console from vertical to horizontal you could potentially endanger your console, but even then a PS5’s cooling and CPU are tightly packed enough to prevent liquids from falling or spilling onto other components.
But even if these PS5s broke from being placed vertically, I’m not going to start laying my console horizontally. Reports of this error are so rare that it doesn’t appear that the problem is widespread. The PS5 has been out for more than two years now, so I’m guessing a lot of people will be placing it vertically (as intended). If this were a common issue we would see many more reports e.g. B. when the Xbox 360 suffered from the Red Ring of Death.
In this case, the risk of reputational damage was so great that Microsoft offered a blanket free return and repair policy. And in this case, the failure rate was allegedly between 3 – 5% (opens in new tab). If PS5s were to fail in significant numbers, we’d hear about it.
We reached out to Sony to see if they were aware of the claims and would like to comment, but have yet to receive a response. We’ll update this article with an explanation if we receive one.
