Xbox One S teardown reveals tight, compact system

Scorpus

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iFixit is back at it again with a new teardown, this time taking apart Microsoft's revamped Xbox One S game console. The deconstruction of the Xbox One S reveals a much tighter design, which allows the system to occupy 42 percent less space than its predecessor.

The outer shell of the Xbox One S is held together with security clips rather than screws, revealing a inner metal case. Under the metal shell are the tightly packed components, including an optical disc drive with a bracket featuring a small Master Chief imprint.

One of the more notable changes moving from the original Xbox One to the Xbox One S is the internalized power supply, which is fanless and accepts 100-240V inputs. It sits neatly among a Seagate 2 TB hard drive (in the highest-capacity model) and a Philips/Lite-On Blu-ray drive with support for UHD Blu-ray.

The Xbox One S' mainboard, which features the AMD Jaguar APU, is cooled by a custom aluminium heatsink with copper heatpipes and a 120mm fan. The board itself features 16 Samsung DDR3 chips, for a total of 8 GB of RAM, along with 8 GB of Toshiba NAND. It's supported by two breakout boards, which add Bluetooth for the controllers, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, and infrared.

In the end, iFixit gives the Xbox One S a good repairability score, noting that it only takes a few tools to deconstruct the entire console, and many internal components are easily replaceable. However, replacing or upgrading the hard drive is a little tricky, and it still only supports SATA II, which limits solid state drive performance if you decide to make that upgrade.

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I find it interesting that the internal components are actually labeled (for the tech's "convenience"). Otherwise, great use of space and layering, and as pointed out by ifixit, surprisingly easy to take apart.
 
...And there's a little master chief logo hidden inside... kind of reminds me of the old amiga days when they used to put b-52 song titles on the motherboards... the A500's had "rock lobster" etched like a circuit in the bottom right corner.
 
I find it weird that they haven't upgraded to DDR4 or SSDs yet...
Otherwise it looks alright and nicely fit in.
 
I find it weird that they haven't upgraded to DDR4 or SSDs yet...
Otherwise it looks alright and nicely fit in.
DDR4 instead of DDR3 wouldnt give any benefit unless they cranked the speed up, which would in turn break compatibility with older games unless they were made with this in mind beforehand (different bandwidth/latency levels)

SSDs can be put in these systems, but they dont help as much as on a desktop due to how consoles operate. They process everything they pull off that HDD before it is loaded into memory, due to how console games are coded VS pc games, a leftover from the days when consoles had 256MB of RAM trying to run battlefield. so raw transfer speeds are not as useful, the speed difference between a SSD and a 7200RPM HDD are minimal.
 
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