The Evolution Championship Series, or more commonly known simply as Evo, had its grand tourney over the weekend in Las Vegas. And it’s the one surprising place to have been the source of heat-related defects of the PS5. Competitors have been reporting incidences of USB connectors on their controllers melting after being plugged into and removed from multiple PS5 consoles.
While the tournament concluded without much issue, the reports on melted USB ports and connectors don’t look to be isolated either. There have been a couple of accounts on X, previously Twitter, as well as Reddit, with various descriptions. One showed the USB plug on their controller being deformed, while another showed a plastic insert from the PS5 USB port being torn out alongside the controller’s USB plug. A third described not being able to plug their controller into a PS5 having just unplugged it from a previous one, and discovering the issue then. Worth noting is that all of these issues involve the USB-A ports at the back of the console.
Heads up to all PS5 players. Please be careful with the back USB ports. Seems the blue piece on the back is coming out and sticking to player USBs. We’re able to pull it out and the port will still work but just to be careful. pic.twitter.com/UBshHFJpsc
— Alex Jebailey (@Jebailey) August 4, 2023
What exactly is causing the issue for now is unclear. One Reddit user shared a couple of notes from the event floor of the Evo tourney itself, some of which may explain this situation. To start, the event floor temperature was claimed to be between 70 – 72 degrees Fahrenheit, or 21 – 22 degress Celsius. But the fault may indeed be in the design of the PS5 consoles themselves. With only one USB-A port in front, most games see competitors plug their controllers to the two ports at the back, where the console exhausts heat.
Our locals got three PS5 setups for SF6. During the first weekend where all consoles were on for multiple hours the backside USB ports of two of them melted and got ripped out.
The backports where either not designed for this or they underestimated the heat the console generates. https://t.co/oY5wkduOYd— Danaiden (@Danaiden_TP) August 6, 2023
It’s also unclear if the consoles were arranged in a way that led to poor air circulation, but it seems likely for a tourney as big as Evo. Making matters worse is the fact that the consoles are left running the games for extended periods of time, to the extent that the area around the USB ports were “super hot to the touch”. Others have also chimed in that this is not something that’s exclusive to the Evo tourney.
Pretty sure one of the unit at EVO is faulty…
You can't have a system that run at 80C° at his core, and melt ABS at the USB output at the same time…
The PS5 shutdown itself before that could happen NORMALLY… :/https://t.co/LRbAoWS2lx— CybKev (@CyberKevin_FR) August 6, 2023
The irony here of course is the fact that Evo is now owned by Sony. So while the tourney remains open to all platforms, it’s safe to assume that titles that are not platform-exclusive will be run on a PS5. This, in turn, means that this whole USB melting situation is liable to happen again unless PlayStation gives the PS5 a slight redesign. Which is pretty unlikely compared to just having tourney organisers supply USB hubs as well.
Of course, there’s no discounting the possibility that the consoles with melting ports were all faulty, considering the number of consoles that were at the event. It’s also been only a couple of months since the stories about Final Fantasy XVI overheating PS5 consoles too.
(Source: X [1], [2], [3], [4], Reddit [1], [2], PushSquare)
