Foreign media wccftech reported that the PS5 liquid metal problem that users exposed before is becoming more and more common now. Many hosts (especially the first-time models) may be "die" in the next few years because they have passed the warranty period.

In the latest episode of the "Broken Silicon" podcast, Alderon Games founder Matthew Cassells pointed out that there is a key flaw in the PS5 host: the liquid metal used for heat dissipation will drip down to the bottom of the host when it is placed vertically, causing "dry spots" in certain areas of the APU (acceleration processing unit), which will cause a significant reduction in performance of the PS5 host and even forced shutdown in some cases.This problem is becoming more common now.

Not long ago, Alderon Games received a report that the latest update of its own dinosaur-themed MMO game "Path of Titans" caused the PS5 console to suddenly shut down..At first, Alderon Games provided some common troubleshooting suggestions, such as cleaning up dust, but the problem was not solved.After pinning the related discussion posts to the developer's Discord server, more people flocked to the forum to report the issue.

Subsequently, Alderon Games issued a wider notice, inviting players to report it if they encounter a sudden shutdown of PS5 while playing any game, and the number of feedback increased significantly.Even some members of the development team have encountered similar problems and are currently investigating the reasons.

The possible reasons are currently under investigation.Everything seems to point to the liquid metal problem, which is more likely to occur when the PS5 is placed vertically.

After communicating with Sony, Alderon Games learned that the more resources the game runs, the greater the possibility that the PS5 will shut down due to liquid metal problems.In recent updates to Titan Road, the percentage of players affected by this issue has risen to 2% to 3%.Although this ratio doesn't sound high, considering the user base of PS5, there are actually a large number of hosts involved.

However, Alderon Games founders say it is difficult to better pinpoint what causes the PS5 shutdown, as it seems to depend on where the drying point is in the APU and which component in the APU is under the most stress (CPU or GPU?).The troubleshooting becomes extremely complicated because the precise temperature of the CPU and GPU cannot be tracked through software.Even if developers try to reduce the hardware load by reducing the frame rate, thus avoiding triggering shutdowns, it may affect players who have no problems themselves, which is not worth the money.

Thankfully, not all PS5 hosts are affected by this design flaw.In the subsequent PS5 Slim and PS5 Pro models, Sony tried to prevent liquid metal from dripping to the bottom of the host by adding ridges between the APU and the radiator.But it is still too early to say whether this design really solves the problem.Relatively speaking, older models are at higher risk, and most of these devices are no longer under the warranty period. If problems arise, they will mean high repair costs.

Speaking to Sony on the issue, Matthew Cassells suggested offering a free repair plan for the PS5 affected by the issue, but this proposal may not be realistic given the huge number of affected equipment.Although this will not recreate the disaster of the "Three Reds Problems" (RRoD) of Xbox 360, the situation is already bad enough. The founder of Alderon Games believes that a large number of consoles will be damaged one after another in the next few years.