Sony has quietly refined the PS5 Slim around cooling, repairability, and internal efficiency. For you, that could mean an easier battery replacement and fewer headaches years after buying the console.
A teardown by console technician Modyfikator89 reveals that newer PS5 Slim units, specifically the Marvel’s Wolverine Limited Edition, now run on a revised EDM-051 motherboard with some useful changes. However, Sony hasn’t announced any of this publicly.
Finally, the PS5 Slim has a battery that you can swap yourself
The biggest repairability change involves the CR2032 CMOS battery. That tiny CR2032 battery keeps your console’s internal clock running. Without it, your PS5 loses system time entirely whenever it’s offline, which can stop digital licenses from verifying and make saved games unusable.
Previously, replacing the battery on the PS5 Slim meant fully disassembling the motherboard, risking your warranty and handling liquid metal cooling in the process. Now, following a layout borrowed from the PS5 Pro, the battery is easily accessible. If it eventually dies, you can swap it yourself for just a couple of dollars instead of sending your console in for repair.
What else changed inside the new PS5 Slim?
Apart from the battery, Sony has restructured the entire motherboard layout, simplifying how components are arranged internally. The cooling system has changed too. Liquid metal around the APU is now contained the same way it is on the PS5 Pro.
Less surface area touches the compound directly, which should lower the risk of leaks during regular use or vibration. The heatsink itself also uses different construction and materials compared with earlier Slim models. Sony even swapped in a cheaper, more efficient HDMI retimer chip.
The revised model reportedly started shipping in September 2026. Yet, these units still ship with the same old manual, which never mentions any of these upgrades. So if you’re hunting for one, you’ll probably have to crack it open yourself to know for sure what’s inside.
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