There are many factors that are considered when cooling any device. However, it is not as simple as stating space = cooling. That is inaccurate. Cooling is all about the movement of heat out of a specific area. You can have a large case but if your mechanism for cooling is insufficient, your system is going to overheat regardless of the available space. I guess I could plug the "it is just physics" line. What is important is the mechanisms that are used for cooling. If we were to use your claims then laptops would not last greater than 3 years. But we both know that is not true because the cooling systems are design for the form factor. The efficiency of the cooling systems dictates how hot a system would run. If there are size constraints then cooling system would need to adjust for these constraints. As someone who prefers smaller systems and a person who builds their own small form factor systems, I am very aware of the constraints of smaller cases and the cooling systems that are needed for these constraints.
Yeah it really is that simple.
Movement of heat out of a specific area still has higher ambient temperatures to deal with because of the simple physics of more energy within a smaller confined space means more heat. You cannot get around that. You're arguing against physics there and that's just not smart.
The mechanisms don't really matter unless it involves introducing lower temperatures into the mix. I don't even mean liquid cooling I mean something more like liquid nitrogen. Otherwise the simple formula of the same amount of heat being generated and funneled through a smaller space = less efficient. You cannot get around this no matter how hard you try and anybody designing electronics knows that.
When there are size constraints the cooling cannot physically be increased in sized. That's nearly impossible unless you want to talk about different metals which have different properties when it comes to heat diffusion, which I'll touch upon later. Radiators operate on a very simple principle of energy transfer. The smaller the radiator, the less amount of energy transferred. You can try to blow more air on the radiator to dissipate that heat into air, but air is a terrible conductor for heat and smaller fans universally move less air. So now you're running smaller fans at higher RPMs to move less air and you now have a hotter and louder console. Exactly what everybody wants.
So you bring up laptops and that's hilarious and undermines your point. A laptop runs at lower voltages and thus lower clocks speeds than desktops. This is done simply because their cooling solutions are compact and cannot move nearly as much heat. Thus a 4070 in a laptop is significantly less powerful than its desktop counterpart. Kind of directly contradicts what you're trying to say.
I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty upset if I bought a $299 Slim PS5 and found was about 75% as powerful as the fat PS5s. I'm being generous with that 75%. If you think Sony or Microsoft is going to commission AMD to build a whole new chip that has the same architecture of their last one but smaller in size just for a slimmer console, then you also probably believe the moon is made of cheese. That's never happened and simply never will.
Even more so, you want to talk about cooling solutions designed around smaller cooling solutions for smaller systems and there is a bit of a caveat I haven't brought up. Various metals can conduct heat better than others. However, the notion of a slim PS5 that's cheaper than the fatter one before it kind of insinuates that it'd also be a lower price. You're now on the line for outfitting a smaller console with smaller parts (historically more expensive) with a more expensive cooling solution, yet gonna release the thing at $100 lower than the digital fat PS5?
I'm sorry but you're just wrong. Everybody who builds PCs knows it too. You build an ITX or Micro ATX PC you'll just expect not only higher priced components, but higher ambient temperatures. You're generally not slotting in full sized GPUs like a 4070 because the platform isn't built to sustain that. Again, common knowledge. I've spent endless hours on various PC forums throughout the years trying to optimize the hell out of CPU temps by under volting systems. That can only work so well. Physics ultimately drives it all.
Console components have already been heavily optimized for their smaller form factor. Historically, which you've also avoided in your response, this has led to short lifespan consoles. Slim PS2, PS3, and even slim PS4s simple run hotter and last less time.
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