The PS5 slim is here, but it doesn’t come from Sony

I hate my PS5. Not the inside, or the games. The outside. I hate the look-at-me design, the ridiculous dimensions, the silly little stand, the way I have to carefully consider how to reconfigure or miss out bits of an IKEA unit to fit its incredible bulk. My Xbox Series X is much less arrogant: it has no desire to dominate my living room; it knows it doesn't need to be flashy to be fun. So this PS5 Slim design is very much the PS5 I wish Sony had made.

The PS5 Slim isn't a Sony project, although we know they're almost certainly working on a PS5 Slim internally. It's by YouTuber DIY Perks, whose video I've embedded below. It's a fully functional PS5 but without the giant footprint.

How to make your PS5 Slim

DIY Perks hasn't just put his PS5 in a different box. He's substituted key components with similar but smaller parts, and he's added his own home-made creations including that shiny case. He also had to remove the power supply to put it outside the console and create a brand new water-cooling system to stop the console from overheating. It turns out that his cooling system performed even better than Sony's.

It is a brilliant project and a superb bit of work, but when you watch the video you'll also see that it's a very big project that really isn't for the faint-hearted: the gap between what I'm seeing on screen and what I'm capable of, even if I had all the same kit, is even bigger than my PS5. So for now I'll have to keep on doing what I've been doing, pretending not to notice the elephant-sized console in the room.