Original PS5 fan cleaning and M.2 SSD upgrade: interactive 3D teardown

All 7 steps

1. 1Lift the cover’s top corner and slide it off trap

   Grip the cover by its top left corner as the console lies, at its top end by the back edge, and lift that corner a few millimetres to free its latch. Then slide the whole cover about 2 cm towards the bottom end of the console, the base’s end, until its hooks let go, lift it straight off and set it down on the mat. Avoid this trap: The cover is held by plastic hooks along both long edges, each under a lip on the console’s black core, and by a latch at its top corner. They only let go once the cover has slid about 2 cm towards the bottom end. Lift it at its front edge instead, or lever it up with a tool, and the hooks are pulled against their lips: the cover bends and a hook snaps off. With a hook gone the cover sits loose and proud, and Sony warns that a cover not fitted properly can let the console overheat. Lift only the top corner, slide, then lift.

2. 2Pry up the fan’s inlet grille

   The black grille over the fan is clipped on, not glued. Slide the flat end of the spudger under its top left corner, into the gap over the fan, and lever it up, then work along it towards the bottom right corner until every clip lets go. Lift it off. Two of the fan’s four screws were under it.

3. 3Undo the four T8 security screws by corner trap

   Undo the four T8 security screws round the fan’s shroud and lay each one in the tray well that matches its corner. They are not alike: the top left one is the longest, 31 mm with a coarse thread; the top right and bottom right ones are 23.3 mm machine screws; the bottom left one is 11.4 mm with a coarse thread. Only the two 23.3 mm screws may change places. Avoid this trap: The four screws look alike but come in three lengths and two threads. Put the 31 mm screw in the bottom left hole, which is only deep enough for the 11.4 mm one, and it bottoms out with most of its length standing proud; driven on, it splits the plastic boss, and that corner of the shroud can never be done up tight again. The short screw in the top left hole reaches no thread, so the shroud is loose there too and the fan can rattle. Lay each screw in the tray by its corner and put it back where it came from.

4. 4Lift the shroud, peel the wire cover, unplug the fan

   Lift the fan’s shroud straight up and set it down. Over the fan’s wires lies a black wire cover held only by adhesive: slide the spudger under its end, under the cover and not the wires, and peel it back off. Then lift the fan’s plug straight up out of its socket by its two edges, a little at a time on each side. Never pull on the wires.

5. 5Lift the fan out

   Lift the fan straight up out of its cavity by its frame, its unplugged lead with it, and set it down on the mat with its blades up. It is a blower 120 mm across and 45 mm thick that draws air in through both faces and blows it through the heatsink.

6. 6Clean the fan and the heatsink fins

   Hold the blades still with the spudger’s tip against one, or a finger, and blow the dust off the fan in short bursts of compressed air, the can kept near upright; lift any hair out with tweezers. Then brush the felt of dust off the heatsink fins at the back of the fan’s cavity, and lift out what it loosens. A cotton swab with isopropyl alcohol takes off sticky grime.

7. 7Fit the M.2 SSD: spacer to 80, in at an angle trap

   Undo the one screw at the top end of the long expansion slot cover beside the fan and lift the cover off. Undo the spacer’s screw: the spacer sits in the 110 hole, the one nearest the fan. Lift it with tweezers into the hole for your drive’s length, 80 for a 2280 drive. Hold the drive by its edges, push its gold fingers into the socket at an angle, press its end down onto the spacer and drive the screw through its notch. Put the cover back on and do up its screw: when the console starts, it asks to format the drive. Avoid this trap: The spacer starts in the 110 hole, for the longest drives. Leave it there and push in a 2280 drive, which is 80 mm long, and its end has nothing to rest on or be screwed to: pressed down, it springs back up out of line as soon as it is let go, and the screw goes into the spacer 30 mm further on, holding nothing. The slot cover then sits on the drive’s heatsink instead of closing, and pressed down hard it bends the drive or levers it in its socket, where the console may not see it. Move the spacer to the hole for the drive’s length before it goes in.

What you need

• Torx T8 security screwdriver (T8H, or TR8) · for the four fan screws; a T9 too, in case
• Phillips #1 screwdriver · the slot cover and the spacer
• Nylon spudger · the grille, the wire cover and the fan’s plug
• ESD-safe tweezers · to move the spacer
• Compressed air and an anti-static brush · short bursts, the blades held still
• M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD with a heatsink · 250 GB to 8 TB, 5,500 MB/s or faster
• A magnetic screw tray · a well for each corner

Questions

Safety

Shut the PS5 down fully, not into rest mode, and unplug its power cord: its power supply is inside and runs on mains. Let it cool, touch something grounded first, work on an ESD mat, and never switch it on with a cover off.

• Mains power: switch it off and unplug it before you open it: its power supply runs on mains voltage. Never plug it in with a cover off.
• Static (ESD): work on an anti-static mat with a grounded wrist strap; a spark you cannot feel can kill a chip.

About this teardown

3D Spatial Reconstruction: Models are engineered from factual hardware measurements to visualize internal layouts, screw lengths, and hidden cable traps before you open your device. Always verify cable routing on your specific hardware revision.

The console is Sony’s original PS5 with a disc drive (the CFI-1000, 1100 and 1200 models), modelled at its published size of about 390 × 104 × 260 mm without its base, with no logos or button symbols. Its side covers lift at a corner and slide off, as the brief for this guide describes; the PS5 Slim (CFI-2000) and the PS5 Pro have covers in parts that unclip by lifting, and a different fan, so the fan steps here are for the original console only, while the M.2 steps are much the same on all of them.

Where the brief differed from the console, the console decided. The fan’s four T8 security screws are three lengths and two threads, not four: two 23.3 mm machine screws, the only pair that may swap, an 11.4 mm and a 31 mm coarse-thread screw, at the corners iFixit’s guides give. The grille over the fan is clipped on, not stuck down: the adhesive strip is the wire cover over the fan’s lead, peeled back before its plug comes out. The spacer does move between the 110 and the 80 holes, and Sony’s own steps use a #1 Phillips driver for it and for the slot cover.

The places of the parts under the cover (the fan, the slot, the disc drive’s plate, the plug, the seal), the number of the cover’s hooks and the grille’s clips, the lengths of the two Phillips screws and the grille’s safe depth are our estimates; the 3D runs faster than real hands do. iFixit’s guides call the fan screws’ bit TR8 and, in one step, TR9, and some owners found one screw seats better on a T9: have both.

Sources: Sony: how to add an M.2 SSD to a PS5 console (sizes, the spacer, a #1 Phillips, formatting), Sony: how to remove and attach covers for your PS5 console (corner, slide, the overheating warning), iFixit: PlayStation 5 fan replacement (the grille, two 23.3 mm, one 11.4 mm and one 31 mm screw, the wire cover, the plug), iFixit: how to open and clean a PlayStation 5 (blades held still, light compressed air, the dust ports, the heatsink), iFixit: how to fix PS5 overheating (each fan screw’s corner and thread, the slot cover’s P1 screw, the warranty sticker), iFixit: what screwdriver do I need for my PS5? (TR8 for the fan), Gigazine: PS5 teardown (covers lifted at the corner and slid, the clawed vent cover, adhesive covers over the fan’s cable, the slot by the fan, a 120 × 45 mm fan), SlashGear: replacing the PS5’s cooling fan (one screw took a TR9; the fan’s cable takes no pull), Inverse: PS5 M.2 install (the spacer starts in the hole nearest the fan), MP1st: PS5 size from Sony’s specifications (390 × 104 × 260 mm), Push Square: the PS5’s dust catchers, Price: Samsung US store, 990 PRO with Heatsink 1 TB, $339.99 (27 October 2026), Price: GizmoPros, Florida, PS5 fan replacement $49.99 and storage upgrade $59.99 (October 2026).

The 3D models, drawings and text are our own. PlayStation and PS5 are trademarks of their owners, named only to say which device this teardown is for; iTakeApart is not affiliated with them.