it's interesting to me hearing people talk about how you have to change the thermal paste in modern consoles like the playstation 3 in order to prevent extreme heat or failure if the thermal application on it is dried out
meanwhile, older disc based game consoles like the PlayStation 2 or Dreamcast don't need this maintenance - why is that? they're all heat generating disc based consoles complete with internal fan/fans
is it really purely because those older consoles have so much less horsepower?
Quick google search says the NES drew 9 watts, PS5 draws 350
The Famicom played floppy discs. Not the same optical media as the Dreamcast/PS2/PS3.
DC was 22 watts, PS3 was 200
A lot of the older stuff probably had more distributed heat generating components across the PCB too, while newer stuff has almost everything in a small "system on a chip" concentrating heat generation onto a single high temperature spot + the memory chips which means the thermal interface matters more
Older CPUs like 6502 were only a little better than calculators while modern CPUs are more like supercomputers with billions of transistors. That's why.
The overheating issue was fixed only a few years later with the popularization of CMOS in the mid 80s.
Oh I should add that the initial Famicoms from 1983 overheated and got recalled because of a poor initial PPU design that was fixed on subsequent revisions.
Putting Noctua fans in a Dreamcast is a popular mod. Also anyone with a PS1 can attest to how much the things overheated.
>Putting Noctua fans in a Dreamcast is a popular mod.
But that's not because the original fan can't cool the Dreamcast properly, it's because it generates quite a bit of noise while doing so. Probably more than when those were new because age is not kind to fan bearings. People also got used to modern, relatively silent devices and forgot how noisy the tech was at the turn of the century.
The Dreamcast is still the loudest video game console I own. It's time to read the disc every dozen seconds WIRRRRRRR CLICK CLICK MAN DOWN GO GO GO WRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
>WIRRRRRRR CLICK CLICK MAN DOWN GO GO GO WRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
>get to a part were the game needs more data accessed
>WWWRRR click
>WWWWRRRR WRRR click
>goes silent until it needs more data then
>WRRWRWRR CLICK
s-soul..
Fat PS3 has a 200W power supply while Dreamcast is rated for 22W (and the GD-ROM drive is a significant part of that). Electronics have been getting more power hungry since the turn of the century in general, increased power limits are used to mask the fact that gains in performance are not as spectacular as they used to be. This is true both about PCs and consoles, but the PC tower form factor always allowed for more robust cooling solutions than something that you should be able to put next to your TV. Problems mostly started to emerge in 7th gen because every console manufacturer happened to use PowerPC during that time. IBM's foundries were far behind the competition and Apple dumped them because their CPUs were just too hard and expensive to cool at good performance levels for the kinds of products that Apple wanted to make. So they went to Sony and Microsoft and offered them really good prices, but that meant that they had to use similar underperforming and overheating CPUs. Wii also used that architecture (just like Gamecube), but it used a CPU from the previous generation that was clocked much lower and in general performed worse. But it also ran much cooler.
7th gen also coincided with the European Union directive that aimed to ban leaded solder in mass-manufacturing (independent repair shops can still use it and continue to do so to this day). The thing about leaded solder is that it's more plastic and less brittle than lead-free solder. So the connections between the CPU and the motherboard that use lead-free solder are much more likely to break and stop connecting if they are exposed to repeated heat cycles. If your Xbox 360 had RRoD or your PS3 had YLoD, this is probably why. And IMO, that's when the repaste meme was born, because it probably really did help save some consoles from heat death, or at least somewhat extended their lives.
>If your Xbox 360 had RRoD or your PS3 had YLoD, this is probably why.
Yep, I fixed my phat PS3 back in the day by reflowing the motherboard in the oven.
oh my no are you clueless. this didn't begin with PS3, not at all. the Intellivision was notorious for overheating.
>Electronics have been getting more power hungry since the turn of the century in generall, increased power limits are used to mask the fact that gains in performance are not as spectacular as they used to be.
Wrong. Modern high end microcontrollers are more powerful than the PS1 and can be powered by human body heat alone. The cheapest microcontrollers you can get for a few cents each are more powerful than 16-bit consoles but can be powered by a single AA battery for a couple of months straight. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are 200 times as powerful as the Dreamcast (1.4 Gflops vs 240 Gflops) and mid end android phones made today are close to 1 Tflops.
To answer the question of why graphics haven't kept up with compute power, it's because polygon count, faster fillrate, and bigger storage don't necessarily lead to better art style. However, modern devs are working with higher polygon count and more complex shading computations even though they hardly result in better graphics because it makes game development easier and electronics have become so cheap that modern game companies don't dare making hundred million dollar AAA games for $50 devices.
>The PS3 and Xbox 360 are 200 times as powerful as the Dreamcast (1.4 Gflops vs 240 Gflops)
But PS4 is only around 2Tflops, which is just 8 times more than PS3. PS5 is only around 10Tflops, which is only 5 times more that PS4. I'm not denying that there has been progress since early 2000s, but it has objectively slowed down compared to how it was in 80s and 90s.
>80s
Tech progress in the console market was slow. The 68000 was only like 3 times as powerful as the 6502, a CPU from the mid 70s. Console manufacturers, especially the Japanese ones, simply buffed up their existing 8-bit consoles by adding higher resolution and more sprites rendered. Games got prettier but consoles and games got more expensive too.
>90s
This is where things started to get really advanced, thanks to RISC chips.
>The 68000 was only like 3 times as powerful as the 6502, a CPU from the mid 70s
in terms of clock speed it wasn't hugely faster but in processing power and memory space (16MB total memory versus 64k) it was a major jump over 6502
That's because it's a workstation CPU with built in memory controller while the 6502 was a very barebones CPU that couldn't even do a DRAM refresh. They coexisted for a long time, they were both invented in the late 70s.
>That's because it's a workstation CPU with built in memory controller while
the 68000 didn't have any on-chip MMU. it was available as an extra-cost optional chip but never found in any consumer-grade 68k hardware, only some workstations used it
>This is where things started to get really advanced
>thanks to RISC chips.
I hope you're not actually serious.
This is complete nonsense. 360 cpu literally never overheated, it was the gpu
how is ps3 modern?
zoomer detected
zoom zoom
>All I wanna do is zooma zoom zoom in your boom boom
So shut the frick up
The PS4 is my favorite retro console
HDMI/1080p, accounts required, installs required, internet required, digital store, game updates, console updates, achievements
forgot:
account locked dlc content (redeem codes)
New consoles put out 200W of heat, old consoles put out 20W of heat. So they don't need so much cooling.
On that note the DC fan is very annoying and probably the reason why I never bothered getting into that console.
>meanwhile, older disc based game consoles like the playstation 2 or dreamcast don't need this maintenance
bullshit. my dreamcast's motherboard has warped from the heat so it randomly resets now.
Was it running in a store kiosk all day?
https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12401
Regarding the random reset issue. This may be helpful.
Japanese DCs had better cooling systems than international models, they skimped on it to save costs.
>Japanese DCs had better cooling systems than international models, they skimped on it to save costs
oh shit, you're right, apparently not all dreamcasts have the metal here, but plastic instead
crazy
Even then, that's only true about the very first Japanese revision AFAIK (the ones whose model name ends in "A")
because the PS3 and 360 had defective GPU thermal designs but none of the companies involved would admit it since no one wanted to pay up
>because the PS3 and 360 had defective GPU thermal designs but none of the companies involved would admit it since no one wanted to pay up
at least Nintendo recalled the first run of Famicoms due to faulty GPU thermal design which is more than these guys did
>famicom
>gpu
And like a quarter of 360s were recalled due to the red ring of death.
>red ring of death
how was that somehow missed during the testing phase of console design? it was such a common, major flaw
It was a production flaw, not something you can find until you have actual units going off the line, and by then it's usually too late. Also, they were rushing things to make it for the holiday release and beat the PS3 by a year.
And even with the billion dollar recall & warranty upgrade, it was worth it, they completely destroyed the PS3 in the first three years. Then they started doing kinect shit and fricked all the lead they had, and haven't managed to recover it ever since.
the first run SNES also had self-destructing CPU
nintendo sure did love releasing consoles that're also members of JIHADI, the wii's first launch consoles have a gpu that literally start dying because of the wiiconnect24 service turning the GPU on for some fricking reason while the console's off, with no cooling it just overheats and burns out over time
got myself a wii here with a dying gpu, didnt even know this was a problem until i looked it up recently.
With PriiLoader you can set a "Skip StandBy Power Off" rule, so each time you press Power on either the Wii or the Wiimote, the console goes to REAL OFF, instead of standby.
It might be a bit late, but it cannot hurt to do it.
It's far too late for that wii, unfortunately. Every game has artifacting and even apps like check mii out have glitches.
>also you're the tripmotherfricker from the cables thread kek i meant to respond to your last post too
Couldn't you also tell the Wii to forget its IP? Especially since the store has been closed for years now.
or you could just disable wc24. I never had my wii go into standby even before I hacked it.
Makes sense, did not think about it.
I guess you just disable the internet. But I got RiiConnect24 into mine, it still connects to the web that way, I visit my little cousins' Animal Crossing town, and help them collect fossils and stuff... I hacked both and ensure we can connect that way.
RiiConnect24 is pretty cool for niche Wii enthusiasts.
That was because on launch model SNES they skimped on the power rail filtering. Apparently some didn't even have thermal paste applied to the 7805 regulator. The initial Famicoms overheated because of a sub-optimal PPU die layout that created hot spots, this was fixed in later revisions.
I just put paste in my N64. I bought it broken and had to clean the inside of it basically. It doesn't have a fan but it does use a giant heat spreader
Older consoles heat was in the PSU
The CPU didn’t use enough power to generate much heat
I mean older systems like the N64, ps2, Dreamcast and Xbox used thermal pads, fans and even thermal paste in the Xbox. They still operate fine, but you should probably replace the fans with noctua fans and also replace the pads with better grade ones so the cooling is better.
I was recently gifted a nonfunctional Dreamcast. Its spindle is gone and the light does not turn on, although power is being given and I see video. Is there a way I could replace the spindle?
you could just get an ODE. There is a serial card adapter... but you need a working disc drive to boot it.
I don't go for that advance of mods. I'd prefer if it was as vanilla as possible. None of the SD Cards.
That being said, a replacement disk drive would be useful. I got this for nothing, whats fifty dollars come Friday?
I'm not gay but fifty dollars is fifty dollars
I am gay, but that still holds true.
>There is a serial card adapter... but you need a working disc drive to boot it.
It's also so bad it's not even worth mentioning.
there is a replacement disk drive on ebay for 50 bucks, the listing has like 10 available. could also install one of those SD card things but personally having the entire library available to me at the press of a button just makes me less apt to play anything.
>uhhhhh modern consoles need to pull 400 Watts because they just DO ok????
Still waiting to see the legendary games or graphics that require even half of that, should be a law on how much these electronics can pull to force homosexual nudevs to try even 5% harder
Xbox series S only pulls like 50W. About as much as the PS2.
Slim PS2s don't pull anywhere near 50W. They pull 15-20W.
Slim PS2 had reliable internals but its shit. No internal hard drive (external hard drive is slow), worse disk drive, no hardware PS1 emulation, and some games are even buggy on it. Fat PS2 is more power hungry but it's the only one worth owning.
Anyway, modern mini PCs, handheld PCs, and laptops that could play AAA games draw 10-25W. They're equipped with ryzen Z1 extreme or intel 155h CPUs. Dick on deck doesn't count because it's too weak.
>Fat PS2 is more power hungry but it's the only one worth owning.
Just avoid early production ones from before 2003 as those had a lot of problems.
Astrocade was the first console with overheating problems. Even contemporary reviews in early 80s books mentioned how hot they get. I don't know how the frick Bally managed this feat in 1978 at 1.79 MHz, but these machines are ovens that kill rare custom chips - today there are numerous mods ranging from heatsinks, to removing rf shielding, to fan mods (see pic).
Bally was truly ahead of their time.
i don't know much about these but the Intellivision was famous for overheating. the Atari 2600 never had those problems though because Jay Miner's guys were that good.
the VCS was a lot like Nintendo consoles with its KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) design philosophy. the other 2nd gen consoles were more like Sony and Microshit in that they went for cutting edge tech that was also a lot less reliable.