Your PS5 May Melt the USB Plug of the Wired Controller
If you’re into pure gaming, you know that wired controllers are better. Or, if you play competitive games like action games, you might have friends who also connect to play with you. Well, when you do, you might want to think twice before using the port on the back of your PS5. This can melt your controller’s USB connector.
According to Kotaku , that’s exactly what happened at Evo 2023, a massive fighting game tournament where players battle it out in games like Mortal Kombat , Street Fighter , and Tekken . Since Sony bought the Evo back in 2021 , the default console for these tournaments is of course the PS5, with older games being played on the PS4. Keeping the tournament exclusively for PlayStation consoles has generated skepticism in the past; Kotaku highlights how it limits the use of controllers and peripherals that PCs can connect to.
But it doesn’t matter as far as Sony is concerned: the pros play the PS5 in the Evo. It seemed to work in 2021 and 2022, but something went wrong this year. After a full day of non-stop use of the PS5, players noticed something disturbing: their wired USB controllers were melting into the USB port.
It’s safe to say that most of us haven’t had problems with our consoles melting the USB connectors on our wired controllers before, so what’s going on here? As CNET notes , PS5s only have a USB-A port on the front of the device. If you’re playing a multiplayer game, as you’d expect from an Evo, you can connect additional controllers to the back of the console. And in case you didn’t know, the PS5 gets pretty hot , especially when it’s been running for hours. All of this heat is transferred to the system through the back of the console where these USB connectors plug in. So it seems possible that these PS5s have reached temperatures capable of melting USB connectors, to the point where some of them have fused with the PS5’s USB port itself.
There are still many unknown factors. Players may have used adapters or non-licensed equipment; perhaps the USB ports were from the problematic PS5 and are not a symbol of the console as a whole.
However, there are steps you can take to reduce the risk of this happening to you. First, make sure your PS5 is set up in a well ventilated area. The console heats up really quickly, and if it’s in a poorly ventilated room, that heat has nowhere to go. Also, try to connect your controllers to the front ports of the console, where they will be away from the biggest heat source.
Need a new controller? Sony’s DualSense controller may not be wired, but it won’t melt on you either: