Is your PS5 making strange noises like ticking or whining? This is why

Is your PlayStation 5 making mysterious noises? The console's power supply could be to blame.

The PS5 is mostly a silent, cool machine even when it's belting out 4K 60FPS gaming and ray-traced visuals. In my PlayStation 5 review, I called the system a marvel of console engineering for its stellar thermal design. Not every PS5 is perfect. In fact, not every PS5 even uses the same fan design. On closer inspection, some PlayStation 5 consoles are making strange sounds during operation.

YouTuber TronixFix just put out a new video investigating the mysterious noises. He identified a fait buzzing sound emitting from the PS5, which some refer to as coil whine. As it turns out, the culprit for the so-called coil whine is a metalized film capacitor from the PS5's power supply unit. In fact, the PS5 uses the exact same capacitor as the PS4 Pro.

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The purpose of the capacitor is to act as a kind of internal lightning rod. It captures stray voltage to make sure there's no voltage spikes in the PS5 when operating. Sadly there's no real fix available just yet, and Steve from TronixFix strongly warns gamers from ever opening their power supplies or messing with the internal components.

It'll be interesting to see how this develops, and I'm curious how many gamers have PS5s with coil whine.