So, Microsoft's new Xbox Series X and S models are starting to roll out today (with more regions to follow), and while they look and perform similarly to the existing models, a new teardown video is showing some noticeable differences on the inside.
Up above, tech YouTuber Austin Evans has taken a look at the internals of Microsoft's two new Xbox Series X models compared to the 2020 original , skipping over Xbox Series S for now. While all the Series X models share huge similarities, the processor, motherboard and heatsink have changed in the new models - something which Xbox hadn't disclosed before release.
The video goes on to do some quick testing, including for noise levels, heat production and power usage, and the new models are more efficient overall, which shouldn't be a huge surprise. Still, it's nice to see - especially in the power department where the new versions will draw a chunk less power from your outlets.
If you're interested in the nitty gritty of this sort of thing, the video up above is certainly worth a watch. Hopefully we see something similar for the new Xbox Series S model soon, but for now, know that if you're picking up one of these Xbox Series X refreshes, you're getting a more efficient machine overall.
Are you surprised to see as many internal changes here? Tell us down in the comments below.
Comments 43
They gotta do a tear down of the controller to confirm a gyro or not.
@InterceptorAlpha
They need to tear down the company and see if any common sense prevails.
Why would you buy a 1tb digital series x
At £429.99.
When you can get 1tb black series at £459.99
And a PS5 1tb digital at £389.98. Also currently on sale for £339.99 in the UK.
The pricing seems crazy.
My strategy would have been sell the series x 1tb digital for same as PS5 1tb digital at £389.99 rrp.
Add free 3 months GPU, especially as COD, Stalker 2 and Indy are all out over the next few months.
Get people used to having that on GPU and hope they take a subscription after the free 3 months.
That how you sell consoles and GPU.
Not surprising considering the Series X is at least 6 years old. Console SOCs are approved well before a launch window. Anyways nothing special about a lesser digital Series X which limits one. One is just better off paying 50 more dollars to get a Series X with a disc drive.
@Vaako007
Totally my point the price for discless Xbox series x is to high in the UK as well.
£429.99.
PS5 digital £389.99
@OldGamer999 I agree, the price of this is comical, being only marginally cheaper than the disc based version. I get some people don't care for physical media but you'd have to be a bit mad to buy this. On Amazon you can even get refurbished X's for £400 and unlike Playstation, there isn't even an option to get a disc drive later if you change your mind
@carlos82
Xbox are not even trying and like you said you can’t buy a disc drive later like the PS5 discless consoles.
Also in the UK currently the PS5 discless is £339.99 and PS5 disc £429.99.
God knows what Xbox thinking when they priced the series x discless at £429.99. Also with no disc upgrade path.
They won’t sell many series x discless at this price, no selling strategy at all to create Xbox console brand momentum.
@OldGamer999 Because NEW SHINY I guess.
Anyone who buys that all digital series X when the previous one is an option just hates all discs, apparently.
@dskatter
Crazy pricing, should at least match PS5 discless at £389.99 rrp.
Then they wonder why they are down 58% in console sales year on year in Europe.
Anyone would think they want to fail 🤣
@OldGamer999 Yeah, MS’s strategy here baffles me. They say they’re not leaving the console market but at the same time they’re doing everything they can to make it sure SEEM like they want to…
@dskatter
That’s why I have left them for now and not investing anymore money in their eco system or third party games on Xbox consoles.
Yep they seem like they want to fail, which makes me think they will leave the under the TV full power console market at the end of this generation.
Or they have decided the series consoles are a totally loss now and are only selling them at cost and if they sell they do and if they don’t they don’t.
Then maybe rise like a Phoenix for next generation hardware wise.
I just don’t trust them at all.
@OldGamer999 Well, as a primarily PS/Switch gamer, my series X is my first Xbox…and probably my last one. At least I got to play the whole Halo series and discover Forza Horizon 3-5!
@dskatter
I’ve been Xbox since day one original Xbox.
So it’s sad for me to see this all unfold like this for Xbox consoles.
Yes FH4 is my favourite as UK, amazing game.
Also Halo is/was a great fps series.
@OldGamer999 PS5 is currently nothing more than a 3rd party game playing console that also has just One AAA First Party game release a year(not even new IPs), AAA First Party Games are not it's selling point anymore so they have to sell consoles cheaper.
And Xbox Digital console price is more than match the Discless PS5 because unlike greedy Sony MS Don't lock you to their Digital store.
It works out far far cheaper to have a Digital Xbox being able to buy Digital games and subscriptions from 3rd parties than being forced into a locked Digital store on PS5.
@Rog-X
The price is not great in the UK for a discless series x 1tb at £429.99.
If everyone and everything is so great over on Xbox with consoles and GPU and games.
How come they are outsold all over the world
And in Europe hardly exist.
@Medic_alert
That is the main thing, they say they are going into next generation with an under the tv console.
But their actions this generation and continuing even more so are saying otherwise.
I just don’t trust them at all.
It's a whole £20 cheaper in the UK for the new digital edition Series X... wow what a saving... The greed of MS and desperation of making back the 80 / 90 billion they've spent in acquisitions is on full display again.
If they dropped the price by £70 or £50 it would be an interesting price, but alas no. It's more expensive then the PS5 slim which let's not forget has the option of fitting a disk drive...
@Medic_alert
I always used to think all the big three were ok and they all sort of are as it is a business.
But with Nintendo and Sony gaming is their main income source.
At the moment it’s like Microsoft are playing with Xbox and trying to find some sort of direction and if that means good by hardware then it does.
Then they wonder why their sales are down and no one trusts them.
They are not showing actions of a company that want to sell hardware even now let alone the future.
@S1ayeR74
Yep £429.000 I think some dickless wonder must be in charge of Xbox console pricing strategy 🤣
I'm gonna choose to believe no significantly different version (modular disc) has been developed and pricing looks as such, because all that RND money has went into handheld console development. At least I hope that is what it is
The very small difference in price between the old 1TB disc Series X and the new 1TB digital Series X makes it seem like they're going to discontinue the old models such that the new 2TB model is the only disc one.
@Grumblevolcano Maybe, or they're pricing it for promo sales since it's better marketing than their other marketing.
It's not so much that Microsoft give the appearance of wishing to leave the console market, @dskatter, but more the case that the Xbox gamer will be leaving the Xbox console and going elsewhere. Everything that Microsoft are doing is driving away their fanbase. It's a very sad state of affairs...
@Fiendish-Beaver
Day one original Xbox gamer.
But sadly no more, so there is your real life evidence.
Sure it's a couple year's since the original consoles launched it's not a surprise there was slight improvements it's expected isn't it🤷
Whenever I see a console without a disc drive I think of that scene in Dogma when Metatron drops his trousers and he’s clearly missing something you’d expect to be there.
@OldGamer999 Absolutely, they should have dropped Series S to £250 and priced this all digital Series X at £370 or so. And they wonder why their consoles aren’t selling…..
Looks nice but I was able to get a new disc Series X for £429. I will probably never use the disc drive but it is nice to have.
I picked up a 2TB Galaxy Sailor Moon whatever it's called Black model Series X, only because the idea of FINALLY having a combined 4TB of space for Series X|S games is something I've been waiting at least a couple of years for. As someone who has CoD and the Halo series installed all the time, I can never have enough storage space, so the upgrade made sense.
Now if only they'd optimize this stuff...
$449 for digital only Series X
$599 for 2tb disc Series X
Makes the $699 PS5 Pro look like a steal with actual hardware improvements.
We knew this would be the case and only a benefit for Microsoft to sell on a better 6nm node and cut costly parts for maximum profit.
I'll stick with disc Series X as many/everyone else should too.
I honestly still don't understand why Microsoft doesn't make more themed xbox series s consoles. (Outside of competitions which barely anyone will get one)
£40 RRP more for discless Series X than PS5 digital and £90 more with the current sale. And for what? This year alone there's been The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Helldivers 2, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade, Black Myth: Wukong, Astro Bot, Silent Hill 2 and Until Dawn released on PS5 that I can't play on Xbox. And what have Xbox had this year that I can't play on PS5? An Age of Mythology remaster and a disappointing Hellblade sequel. Oh but they support grey markets so it's fine! MS have been losing me for a while now.
@kuu_nousee more I think about it, more I feel like PS5 Professional might not be overpriced in todays economy. Personally I don't need it and will not get one unless through a wild ISP deal or similar, but compared to MS offering it looks like a better option.
Well ... Nothing New under the Sun. As any producer, Microsoft Is cutting costs... No more no less.. in order to maximize its margin. They changed the heatsink (bye bye vapor Chamber ...) put a 6 nm soc and ... That's it. As a previous fellow said, too Bad WE don't have more collector edition or different colors.
@Cikajovazmaj in this economy neither is horrible value even the Series X, but still off customer realities.
If the Series X 2tb was $569, Series X disc 1tb was $469, Series X disc less 1tb was $429, and Series S 1tb was $329 and 512gb was discontinued used at $229 we would not have such a dire pricing structure for sales.
If only there were also two PS5 Pro skus it would be as bad either: 2tb at $699 and 1tb at $599.
This is all about perspective of the value of money/cost of parts and I think honestly Microsoft and Sony STILL failed the marketing for fall/winter 2024 for consoles.
Remember the following:
Series X = 52 RDNA2 CUs with custom ML hardware
PS5 Pro = 60 RDNA4 CUs with PSSR ML hardware
People forget Series consoles have custom ML cores but we have still yet to see great usage of it or Microsoft implement Auto SR into the Series hardware. It has been so far truly a waste of die space on the Series APUs as the ML cores are not utilized and no custom "DLSS/XeSS/PSSR"-like upscaler has been created for usage for Xbox games.
Microsoft's Auto SR: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/autosr/
The only problem is Auto SR currently requires NPU processing hardware, which both Series consoles lack and likely will be in the next generation of consoles for Xbox. Great didn't plan that one correctly for consoles. Like we need an announcement of a custom ML solution in Series consoles any day now. It's been...4 years and still nothing.
Hate to say this though but the PS5/Series release of games will be well into the 2030s, maybe even 2032/2033 stuck with FSR2 grain. The pricing of this gen consoles for 4 years is gonna make sure of it even when a Xbox Series 2X | 2P happens in late 2026/early 2027.
@kuu_nousee disappointing as it might be, ML in Series consoles was more marketing than useful piece of hardware. I believe that was agreed upon multiple times by DF folk and such, mainly capabilities of that hardware are too low to be used in any upscaling capacity.
Which is to be expected, as it's on par with GTX generation of cards which are not powerful enough for DLSS or even decent TSR.
@Cikajovazmaj I recall hearing that but didn't want to mention as I didn't have a video for proof/reference.
It's truly unfortunate it's like PS5 and Series X|S were made as upgrades of the SSD from Xbox One and PS4, nothing more in a rush without anything promising from AMD because they sat on their way ML/upscaling wasn't needed for the next 4+ years and brute force hardware was enough.
Microsoft and Sony had to force them to make custom ML or work with them to push RDNA4 ML cores to PS5 Pro even ahead of RDNA4 PC GPUs launch.
It's almost like Microsoft and Sony should have their engineers have the say so of the GPU roadmap at AMD, not AMD.
I'm personally ready to dump PS5 and Series consoles as they have been a letdown.
@kuu_nousee AMD has really dropped the ball when it comes to dedicated hardware upscaling. They started talking about it as a new thing just now. Basically, handicapped this whole generation of consoles. Switch 2 is gonna end up having DLSS and "big" consoles won't 🤦♂️
@Vaako007 there are a lot of complaints about the bluray drive in the Series X and One X. The PS5 has a bluray player that is leaps and bounds better than the one Xbox has. After reading thru some forums I decided to see how the bluray players performed in my Series X and One X and they are not able to read most of my 4k blurays. The One S that I have had since release day reads everything perfectly. There is a problem either software or hardware the MS needs to address but for the most part they have choose to ignore the complaints. I had never used the bluray player for watching movies in any of my Xboxes until I decided to check and see if they had that problem.
Makes sense they'd take this opportunity to make a few changes internally after lesson learned from 4-5 years of real world usage and manufacturing. When you're really into old consoles and home computers you'll find that there's often a fair bit of difference on the inside of some models over time to cut costs, etc. even if it looks identical on the outside.
Power and noise improvements are good as it actually saves you money.
@BleedingDreamer Yeah the drive isn't the best sadly. I've had issues with some 4K discs just not working. For example I've tried 2 different copies of Matrix Resurrections, and neither would play in my Series X. I hope it's something that can be fixed, but could be a hardware or deep firmware issue sadly.
i have my xbox series x 2020 model and am keeping it there is no way i would spend money on the new xbox series x/s the heck with that and why even make a Digital xbox series x seems like a total waste of time and money i sure miss the golden age of video gaming when the 360 was in its prime we will never see anything like that again those were the days !
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...