Never-before-seen PS4 Pro 'Neo' devkit teardown: 16GB GDDR5 RAM, 12mm heat pipe

A devkit for Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro has been torn down publicly for the first time, revealing a substantial heat pipe, 16GB of GDDR5 memory, and a 16nm APU design.

Gamers Nexus just got a hold of one of the most elusive pieces of tech and tore it down for everyone to see. The PlayStation 4 Pro's devkit has been discussed in private forums and there are various photos of the Neo devkit floating around, but now we have a near 30-minute dissection of the system itself in a public YouTube video.

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Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro devkit is meant to be top secret and no one besides developers are supposed to discuss features of the higher-end console platform, but the teardown reveals some interesting things. For one, the Neo devkit has 16GB of unified GDDR5 RAM in an array of 16x 1GB GDDR5 chips, presumably to mimic the PS4/PS4 Pro's 8GB system memory while also having extra memory for debugging and testing.

The PS4 Pro devkit also features a sizable 70mm Nidec fan meant to circulate serious airflow, however Steve from Gamers Nexus notes that the design is "horribly inefficient" due to its lack of thermal interfacing between the plate holding the memory pads and the heatsink itself.

Speaking of the heatsink, the Neo devkit features two 12mm heat pipes, which Steve notes is the "largest heat pipe I've personally ever seen in an electronics product."

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The heatsink has two heat pipes with an evaporator and condenser end alongside a rather sizable fin stack array on the underside of the heat pipes. There's also an aluminum pin-style fin stack that lies on the other side of the APU cold plate.

The Neo's chassis is also somewhat similar to the PlayStation 5's internal structure, namely the circular design that follows the Nidec fan.

When it comes to the APU, it appears the PS4 Pro devkit uses a very similar 16nm SoC to the actual consumer PS4 Pro, however the serial number is a bit different. The Neo devkit's SoC callout is CXD90044GC, whereas the retail PS4 Pro is CXD90044GB.

Notable PS4 Pro devkit features

• 70mm Nidec fan
• 16x 1GB GDDR5 memory chips (16GB of total unified memory)
• SoC number: Sony CXD90044GC
• APU with lid - 23mm x 14.9mm
• 12mm heat pipe