Maintenance shop owner warns: it is best not to place Sony PS5 vertically for a long time.

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen OC_Formula for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com January 7 news, like many previous PlayStation hosts, PS5 can be placed horizontally or vertically, depending on personal preference and furniture layout. Usually, different placement methods have little impact on the performance of the host, but a maintenance shop owner has warned of a potentially dangerous flaw in PS5.

The problem occurs with the liquid metal used to cool the APU of PS5. Liquid metal is often used as a medium, combining the cooler with the heat treatment unit, allowing the safe transfer of heat and keeping the processor from melting at high temperatures. However, if the seal between the APU and the cooler is broken and the PS5 is placed vertically, some liquid metal will leak out.

According to Wololo.net, many maintenance shopkeepers released photos of damaged PS5, which showed liquid metal leaking on the motherboard of the mainframe. Many maintenance shop owners said that the PS5 was stored vertically, and when the APU seal broke somehow, the liquid metal leaked out.

YouTuber and mainframe maintenance expert TheCod3r discovered one such PS5 in October. The mainframe was placed vertically in the original package for several months and found that it could not be started when it was sold. After taking it apart, he found that there was coolant all over the motherboard, which could further short-circuit the components that came into contact with liquid gold on the motherboard, thus damaging the mainframe due to the high electrical conductivity of the liquid metal. In addition, two independent repair shops in France reported similar problems.

CTOnews.com learned that the easiest way to avoid this problem is to place the PS5 horizontally, and if the mainframe is turned off because of overheating, or if its fans continue to work at high loads, it is best to go to the repair shop to see if there is a liquid metal leak.

So far, it is not known what caused the seal between PS5's APU and coolant to break, nor is it a well-known hardware defect that Sony has yet to respond to. Sony said earlier on CES that the era of shortage of PS5 was officially over after the shipment of 30 million PS5.