nextlander patreon

The Nextlander Podcast 009: Kneading Biscuits in Your Brain

🕑 Added 2021-08-04 23:32:37 +0000 UTC

Comments

Brad Grenz

I have to say, Brad and Alex were vastly overstating how complicated the process of adding a compatible SSD to the PS5 is. I did it yesterday after getting into the beta and it's shockingly easy, much easier than upgrading a PS3 or PS4 hard drive. In both of those cases you are replacing the original drive so you have the problem of needing to either backup the data to a space USB drive or needing PS Plus to at least backup your saves. Then you also need a USB stick to download the firmware needed to reinstall the OS on the new hard drive after installing. You also have to deal with way more screws, since the 2.5" drives in those consoles are secured using a drive cage. By contrast on PS5 you just pop off the outer shell (which comes off way easier than you'd expect), unscrew the slot cover, insert your drive and secure it in place using the preexisting standoff and screw, close it back up and reboot. Since you're just adding storage all your games and data are still there. The new drive is quickly formatted and you're on your way. No multiple reboots to install firmware. No 12 hour data restore process. It's just done. Finding compatible drives is easy. There are good lists on Eurogamer or Reddit already, and three manufacturers were already advertising their drives as compatible the day the beta was released, and adding heatsinks to an SSD is cheap and easy, if needed. Pricing is also much better than you implied. I bought the XPG S70 2TB drive (rated for 7.4GB/s) for $350, but the price actually dropped to $309 on Amazon today. The popular compatible 1TB models from Gigabyte and Western Digital were selling for $199 before they sold out, and the prices spiked as third party sellers started trying to capitalize on the sudden demand from PS5 users. The 1TB model of the XPG drive I bought is only $159. The only problem with the XPG is the version being sold in most places uses a chunky heatsink too tall to fit, but it's easy to remove the top half of the cooler and replace it with a low profile heatsink that will fit for an extra $10. That's what I did. Others have just left the SSD slot cover off.

Brad Haney

I don’t think I’ve ever had trouble reading game text on a TV.

Oh man World Games was a throwback. I remember my dad had pirated that wayyy back in the day and I would just load up the floppy disks and play it for hours... I want to say it was on an old Atari 1040ST