Editor's take: In comparison to the countless smartphone teardowns I've waded through over the years, this was quite straightforward and easy to follow. There simply aren't a ton of steps and parts involved, no doubt good news for the "right to repair" crowd. Of course, with most all of the major components built onto the mainboard, I'm not really sure how much repairing will be doable, but at least the console is easy enough to tear down should the need arise.

Sony on Wednesday beat repair shops like iFixit to the punch by conducting a teardown of its upcoming PlayStation 5 game console.

Masayasu Ito, EVP of hardware engineering and operation at Sony Interactive Entertainment, said on the official PlayStation blog that they've spent the last five years designing and developing the machine.

The teardown starts with the removal of the side panels, a task that can be easily accomplished without any tools. From here, we get our first look at the cooling fan and restrictive grills covering it. As a case modder, these grills would be the first thing I'd remove to improve airflow and cooling performance.

Expanding the console's storage should be an easy enough task thanks to the PCIe 4.0-based M.2 interface.

This is about as far as the average user will ever need to go but of course, Sony pressed forward for curiosity sake. Do note that doing so at home will void your warranty.

The cooling fan and Blu-ray drive come out next, followed by the motherboard shield and the mainboard which houses the CPU, GPU and integrated 825GB SSD. The system's heatsink is next to exit, a hulking piece of copper and aluminum with strategically placed cooling fins and heatpipes running the length of the unit to help transfer heat.

Last but not least is the internal power supply, a 350W unit that's nestled on the side of the console.

Sony's PlayStation 5 launches on November 12, 2020.