A Kickstarter campaign is making waves with its promise of solving overheating issues on the PlayStation 5—especially those troubling instances where the rear I/O can get so hot that it melts. When we checked, the campaign had amassed $89,000, and they’re hoping to stretch that to $125,000. The starting price for this cooling device is $39.
They’re calling it the Arctic PS5 cooler, and it’s being hailed as the first AI-powered PS5 cooler in the world. It’s essentially a vent you can clip onto the back of your console, designed to tackle heat with either four or six fans. The device takes power from just one USB port and even includes a pass-through, so you don’t lose any connectivity options.
The creators, SCRY, are presenting three different models, tailored for each PS5 version. They’ve got one for the original PS5, cheekily referred to as the “fat” model, and separate units for the PS5 slim and the newer PS5 Pro. The slim and pro versions are quite alike, both featuring four fans—three positioned at the top and one at the bottom. Meanwhile, the “fat” version ups the fan count to six.
The Kickstarter campaign emphasizes this trio of coolers uses “smart thermal AI” to tweak fan speeds based on the console’s internal temperatures. It’s a technique that’s been used in PCs for a long time, but SCRY is bringing it to the console world. Once temperatures hit 50C, the fans kick into high gear to keep things chill.
SCRY promises that their cooler can slash temperatures by 30% compared to how the PS5 usually runs, bringing it down from a peak of 64C to 55C. They’ve got thermal camera images on their page to back this up, showing a 9-degree Celsius drop at the ethernet port—the hottest part at the back of the console.
The aim here is to safeguard your PS5 from overheating. Just last year, there were reports about the console getting too hot while running certain games, like Final Fantasy XVI. In some extreme cases, the overheating was severe enough to cause melting around the rear connectors.
Besides the coolers, SCRY is also pushing a Gen 4 M.2 SSD with a heatsink as part of their Kickstarter venture.
They’ve got a stretch goal target of $125,000, which, if hit, comes with a universal “vertikal” PS5 stand. There are other stretch goals at $75,000 and $100,000, but details on those will be revealed once they’re unlocked.
