If your PlayStation 5 is performing strangely, even if you do not receive a temperature alert, you may be experiencing PS5 overheating issues. Before taking your valuable console in for evaluation and repair, there are a few things you may try that will not violate the warranty and may fix your problem. So, if your PS5 console needs to unwind, here’s what you should do.

With millions of PS5s sold to players around the world, some will surely develop flaws. Don’t assume that any strange behavior from your console is due to heat. If your console is still under warranty and none of the suggestions below resolve the problem, we strongly advise you to contact Sony for a free repair or replacement.

Even if your PS5 is out of warranty, we do not recommend opening it up to undertake the maintenance yourself unless you are very confident in your abilities. Rather, take it to a licensed third-party technician for evaluation.

It’s important to note that removing the PS5 outer covers or opening the SSD expansion bay does not constitute opening the system since both of these actions are specifically meant for users to do.

So, how do you know if your PS5 is overheating? There are several potential symptoms:

• Error message that reads, “Your PS5 is too hot”
• High levels of fan noise
• Graphical glitches or artifacts such as white or black dots, or the screen flashes solid colors such as green
• A poor gaming experience in the form of stutter and low framerates
• A sudden shutdown without warning
• Crashes or instability, especially during demanding games

It’s important to note that symptoms such as visual glitches can also be traced to faulty memory or to heat-related issues with parts that are not user-serviceable. So if such problems persist after following our tips, get a professional assessment of your system.

1. Check That the PS5 Fan Is Spinning

The PlayStation 5 is an exceptionally quiet console, so you may not know when your fan (there’s just a single huge one) has stopped spinning. Without the cooling fan pushing air through the system, your PS5 will quickly shut down as it hits its failsafe temperature.

To check whether your fans are still running, boot up a game with the sound muted and keep your year close to the PS5. You should hear a faint rush of air. Alternatively, you can hold your hand near the air vents at the top (in vertical orientation) of the console. You should feel air flowing over your skin.

If it seems that your fan has stopped working, it’s time to get a warranty repair or have it replaced by a pro.

2. Remove the Covers and Vacuum the Ports

Any computer system cooled by fans will accumulate dust and lint over time. The designers of the PS5 have considered this and added special ports on the console where you can vacuum out collected dust. All you have to do is remove the side covers and vacuum the ports indicated in the official Sony video teardown.

Read Also: Which Games Look Best on PS5?

Then put the side covers back, power on the system, and see whether the issue is resolved. You may also want to use a can of compressed air to blow dust out of the fan through the vent. However, be careful not to create condensation by holding the can at the wrong angle!

The fan can be removed without opening the entire system if you want to give it a thorough cleaning. Just disconnect its power cable and remove the necessary screws.

3. Check Your Ventilation Space

Your PS5 is not a sealed system; it moves hot air out of the system and replaces it with cool air. Without proper ventilation around the console, this can’t happen. It’s also an issue if you place the console in a poorly ventilated enclosed space. Make sure there’s enough distance from the wall surface or the sides of your media cabinet.

Ensure that there’s room around the PS5 and that the cabinet has enough vents to allow air to move through it. Perhaps most importantly, make sure you use the PS5’s included stand!

Whether you’re using the console in vertical or horizontal mode, the included stand ensures enough space between the bottom of the console and the surface it’s on to let air flow.

4. Put Your PS5 on the Right Surface

You also should avoid running your console on soft surfaces such as a bed or carpeted floor. This can easily block vents and cause heat buildup. Not only that, there’s a lot of dust, pet hair, and dirt on the average carpet, even if it looks clean. All of that will get sucked into the system and cause issues.

Place your PS5 on a hard surface such as a shelf on a TV stand or a desk to ensure optimal cooling.

5. Control Your Room Temperature

Unless you use water cooling or exotic refrigeration, it’s generally not possible to cool a CPU or GPU to below the ambient temperature of a room. If you live in a hot climate and the heat and humidity in the room your PS5 lives in are high, it might be enough to push it over the edge.

In this case, heat issues may only present after extended amounts of play as the system’s temperature slowly rises. The only answer here is to lower the room’s temperature by using an air conditioner, opening windows, or turning on a fan.

6. Expansion SSD Overheating Issues

There’s a particular overheating issue that only affects users who have expanded the SSD storage of their PS5 by using the special expansion slot. If you want to increase the amount of storage you can play PS5 games from (rather than just archiving them on a USB drive), you can install a standard M.2 SSD in a special slot.

Of course, you must use a drive that conforms to Sony’s requirements regarding speed and physical size, but other than that, it should just work when you slot it in.

However, Sony also requires that your SSD have a heatsink attached. Many drives come with a heatsink pre-installed, but if not, you need to do this yourself. It’s as simple as buying a heatsink of the correct size, peeling off a stick, and then sticking it on the memory chips of the drive. However, if you don’t do this, the drive will still work, and you may not notice any issues at first.

Should the drive overheat, it will slow down to compensate for high temperatures. This may result in stuttery asset streaming or long loading times in your game. So we strongly advise that you install a heatsink on any M.2 drive you install in the expansion slot of the console.

You may have seen aftermarket cooling systems on Amazon that act as alternative stands or clip onto the vents of your PS5. These products promise to improve cooling and (on previous gaming consoles) reduce fan noise.

We don’t recommend that any PS5 owner purchase a cooler like these. Firstly, a properly working PS5 makes virtually no noise in the first place. Secondly, if your PS5 can’t maintain a safe operating temperature without a bolt-on cooler, it requires cleaning and perhaps even repair. On balance, the cooling claims of these products usually turn out to be a lot of hot air!

What Can Damage Your PS5?

When customers hold the PlayStation 5 vertically, liquid metal may begin to move or seep out. This limits the console’s capacity to handle the heat generated by its APU, potentially causing damage to the processor. The liquid metal can also leak onto other sensitive components, resulting in a short circuit.

The PS5 is an incredible piece of equipment, but it must be properly cared for to ensure top performance and to avoid unnecessary damage. Keeping this in mind, there are a few things to avoid if you want to extend the life of your console and accessories. Here’s what you shouldn’t do with your new PlayStation 5 console.

1. Never Leave Your PS5 Running Without Activating Rest Mode/Shutting Down

Have you noticed that your PS5 gets warm when it is in use? It will do; it has a lot of work to undertake to deliver those amazing gaming experiences you know!

So, it goes without saying that you should never just leave your PS5 running when you’re not using it. Especially if you have disabled the auto-rest mode that is there to protect your console. If you leave it running without entering rest mode or shutting your PS5 down, it could overheat, which spells disaster for your device.

Doing this could damage crucial components inside your PlayStation 5, and this can have a knock-on effect, potentially rendering your console useless if the damage is severe. Thus, you should always put your PS5 into rest mode when not in use.

2. Don’t Turn Your PS5 Off During an Update

When your console is updating, it is performing crucial tasks and should not face interruption while doing so. Especially if that interruption involves you cutting the power to the device by turning it off. Performing a “hard shutdown” like this could irreparably damage your system memory, and corrupt any game saves on your console.

Do you want to restart your Demon’s Souls game, when you’re 83 hours in, just because you turned your console off during an update? Correct, you don’t, so never turn the console off while it is in the middle of updating.

3. Refrain From Disabling the Auto-Update Option

When your PS5 is in rest mode, one task it can perform is downloading and installing updates. For this to work, though, you need to leave the option enabled, which means you shouldn’t go turning it off unless you have a very good reason.

Auto-update ensures that your console has the latest security patches and firmware, so it protects your PS5 from any vulnerabilities that Sony and its team of problem-solvers happen upon. It also means you have all the latest features on your console. So, unless you desperately need to turn auto-updates off, leave them running.

4. Avoid Inserting Discs the Wrong Way

It goes without saying that you should only ever insert a disc into your PS5 the right way around. It won’t necessarily damage your PS5 or your game disc, but it could lead to confusion on your part when the console fails to recognize the disc and refuses to install anything.

Confusingly, Sony has changed tack when it comes to inserting a disc into your PS5, compared to its predecessor. With the PS4, the disc went in with the label face on the right. However, the PS5 disc orientation has changed, meaning if you have your console in the vertical position, the label should face to the left.

5. Don’t Leave Unused Discs in the Drive

Again, this won’t necessarily harm your PS5 if it is stationary and/or switched off. However, it might cause unnecessary wear and tear if your disc-reader is attempting to read an unused disc all the time, while you play a digital copy of a game installed on your PlayStation.

Not only that, but the PS5 optical drive isn’t known for being the quietest of components; this writer’s sounds like a heliport with a disc inside. You don’t want that interrupting your gameplay!

If you leave a disc in the drive and move the console while the disc is spinning, you risk damaging your sensor or possibly (though less likely) the disc itself.

6. Never Insert More Than One Disc!

Parents of curious toddlers, beware. Your PS5 is not a nice letterbox for your little one to mail all your games off into the ether, one by one. So, you should always keep an eye on what your tyke is doing, or you might find you’ve got no game discs left and a PS5 that is full to burst!

Likewise, this is why you should never leave a disc in the drive; you might end up shoving two discs into the slot, if you forget, which can cause a nightmare for you if they get jammed in place, and could wreck your disc reader in the process.

7. You Shouldn’t Power the PS5 Down Incorrectly

When you power your console down, you should do it in the appropriate manner. This means you go to your power settings and select Turn Off PS5 and wait for the console to power off completely.

Never EVER just switch your console off at the wall while it is still powered on. This could easily lead to the corruption of save data, especially if your console was writing said data when you took the power source away suddenly. We refer you back to our Demon’s Souls example earlier on…

8. Don’t Try to Jailbreak or Hack Your PS5

OK, if you think that using an aimbot in Warzone is the pinnacle of gaming excellence, you go ahead and jailbreak or hack your PS5. I hope you brick it, leaving a $499 hole in your dishonest, cheating pockets.

And this is the crux of the matter. The reason you should never try to jailbreak or hack your PS5 is that you could brick the device (another term for breaking it so much it becomes nothing more than a heavy lump on your TV stand) if you don’t know what you’re doing. That is a pretty expensive paperweight it’ll leave you with.

9. Don’t Direct Your Anger at Your PS5

Just because some cheat used their jailbroken PS5 and an aimbot to blow your head to smithereens in Warzone, that doesn’t give you the excuse to take your anger out on your PS5. Yes it is frustrating, but it isn’t your PlayStation’s fault, so try to direct your ire elsewhere.

And “elsewhere” doesn’t mean direct it at your DualSense controller instead; it isn’t going to do your joypad, your wallet, or you, any good if you angrily bounce your controller off the wall. Remember, at the end of the day it is only a game, and there isn’t any point getting so worked up about it that you damage your console or controller.