Two years ago Sony released the first console that had enough power to run games at “Ultra HD” resolution, it was called PlayStation 4 Pro. Since then the console has been doing great apart from the 4K gaming experience.
Many of the titles that give an option for 4K are not actually rendering 4K but using a checkerboarded dynamic rendering that changes the resolution in each frame. Some frames are rendered at 4K while some are rendered at subsequently lower resolutions. That is how PS4 Pro managed to be the first console that could promise 4k games at a cheaper cost.
There is one common problem with every launch grade PS4 console and its called the “jet engine”. The reason why the problem is called “jet engine” is because whenever you play an intensive game the fans become so loud that the sound resembles the noise coming from the jet engine. Sony has released the new iteration of the PS4 Pro console that has eradicated the jet engine problem.
It is actually the second iteration of the console, the first iteration came with the 500 Million Special Edition console. It was also quieter than the launch model. The hardware difference here was that the job of the fan in the launch edition was also to cool the GDDR5 memory along with the CPU and the GPU that was one of the reasons why the fan had to run hard which created more noise.
The workaround that Sony came up with was that they actually ignored the cooling of the GDDR5 memory, hence the fan had less heat to dissipate and the noise was reduced. Though the consoles end up getting hotter and hotter, the peak temperatures that were in the late 50s for the launch models reached early 60s for the 50 Million Special Edition model.
The new console has just started filtering out and in the UK it is only available in the bundle form with the Red Dead redemption 2 game. However, it is expected that the newer edition will become more common once the holiday season arrives. Regardless, you can tell for the fact that you are getting the new model because the model number is highlighted on the box and in the case of Red Dead Redemption 2 bundle the model number to look for is CUH-7216B.
They have included a physical copy of the Red Dead Redemption 2 game thankfully if you plan to buy the product you would not have to download the massive 96GB game data. Coming to the console itself from the outside it looks exactly the same with one main difference. All the previous revisions of the PS4 Pros got the power from the standard “Kettle” cord just like the old PlayStation 3s. The back of the new CUH-7200 PS4 Pro now houses the figure-eight input which is now standard and can be found in every other console (PlayStation 4 Slim, Xbox One S and Xbox One X).
Other than this the ports selection and orientation stay the same as before. The use of the new standard cord is an efficient move from Sony’s part, though the change of port is not going to affect the power delivery. Its an iterative revision rather than an intensive revamp.
Since there is no change in the fan and the processor that it requires to cool is the same chip that is manufactured using a 16nm FinFET process, and the heat it dissipates is roughly the same. However, Sony has done this before with the CUH-7100 iteration and proved only acoustics can do wonders, and the newer version made it better.
To test out the new version, we decided to run the God of War and the first hours of the game are pretty hard on the console. The fan kicks in whenever there is an intense fight or the camera is showing the complex details of the character models. During one of these times, we paused the game and took it to the photo mode which kept things tight for the processing department in all iterations of the console.
We tested the temperatures of the consoles, the speed of the fan and the level of noise that these fans are generating. As expected the launch version of the console had the fan spinning at the highest speed and hence producing the greatest level of noise respectively. The temperature, on the other hand, was the lowest of the bunch, it was also drawing most power out of the socket. The CUH-7100 and the CUH-7200 models were neck to neck in almost all cases other than the level of noise where the CUH-7200 snatched the lead with the peak noise of 48dB only. The average noise level of the remaining consoles was greater than the highest level of noise generated by the CUH-7200.
So, the thing to take back from here is that the new model of the console is exactly the same with less noise which can be deal for many consumers out there. Also, if you plan on buying the console I would say wait for the Black Friday deals to come in as the console will be much cheaper then.