PS5 hardware reused as AMD’s 4700S desktop kit

It’s the AMD 4700S Desktop Kit, a small piece of hardware that combines a processor, cooler, and memory on a small motherboard. Essentially, it’s a mostly stand-alone computer system that will soon appear in more than 80 different machines from AMD’s system integration partners. It’s also surprisingly similar to the hardware inside a PlayStation 5 console. In fact, it could be almost exactly that.

When photos of the mysterious AMD 4700S desktop kit started appearing in retail listings in May of this year, many believed the small form factor system might be a version of the AMD system on a chip (SoC) in use. inside the Xbox Series X Console. Now that tech experts have taken a closer look at the official AMD product list, it seems more likely to be more of a version of the SoC used for the PlayStation 5. This is an easy mistake to make. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X use a custom 8-core AMD Zen 2 processor paired with custom AMD RDNA 2 graphics and 16 GB of onboard GDDR6 SDRAM. The main difference is that while the Xbox Series X processor can run up to 3.8 GHz, the PlayStation 5 version operates at a variable rate of up to 3.5 GHz.

On closer inspection, the processor included in the 4700S Desktop Kit is more in line with that of the PlayStation 5. The similarities between the two processors can be easily seen by comparing the shot of the 4700S processor from Korean Hardware Site Bodnara to a photo of the PlayStation 5 processor from I fix itdismantling the console.

Now, before we start stepping on AMD to keep us our PS5 components, a few things are worth mentioning. For starters, while the 4700S Desktop Kit, which AMD said Tom’s gear will soon appear in over 80 different PC models, sharing hardware with the PlayStation 5, it is not a PlayStation 5. The 4700S does not have an integrated graphics card, which is why the card does not have a HDMI output, just one slot for a modest graphics card. It’s not about stealing the PS5 to pay for a PC.

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It is much more likely to be a case of regrouping, a common practice among computer hardware manufacturers. Hardware manufacturers have certain performance standards for the components they produce. Rather than throwing away expensive equipment that does not meet the standards the manufacturer is targeting, the company will reserve it for use in a different, less potent product. Maybe the company is completely disabling features, like onboard graphics, for example, to sell what could have been the guts of a console as a small, almost stand-alone PC.

It may sound like a strange practice to chip away at industry outsiders, but I like to think of it that way. If my local grocery store takes a bruised apple, cuts off the bruised part, and uses it to bake a pie, that doesn’t take away from the pie. Also, now I’m hungry.