Sony appears to have quietly reworked the inside of the PS5 Slim again, and one of the changes is the kind of small detail repair-minded owners have wanted for years. A console technician known as Modyfikator89 opened up a Marvel’s Wolverine Limited Edition PS5 Slim and found a new motherboard, identified as EDM-051, along with a CMOS battery that can now be swapped out more easily.
The CMOS battery is a standard CR2032 coin cell, the same type found in watches and PC motherboards, and it keeps the console’s internal clock and certain settings alive when the system is unplugged. On earlier PS5 Slim units, that battery sat underneath the main board, meaning a replacement involved a fairly deep teardown. The PS5 Pro took a friendlier approach, with its battery reachable after removing a single screw, and this revised Slim seems to be moving in that direction.
It sounds minor, but PlayStation owners have reasons to care. Back in 2021, a dead CMOS battery on PS4 consoles became a real concern after it emerged that a drained cell could interfere with playing games offline. Sony addressed that through a firmware update, but the episode showed how a cheap component can quietly affect a console’s long-term usability. Making it easier to replace is a practical win for anyone planning to keep their hardware for years.
The teardown also points to further cooling changes, following a previous Slim revision in 2025. According to the technician, the heatsink uses different materials, while the surface of the main processor and the way its liquid metal thermal compound is contained now look closer to the PS5 Pro’s design. A newer HDMI retimer chip was also spotted on the board.
Before anyone rushes to hunt down this specific model, some caution is needed. Sony hasn’t announced any of these changes, and everything here comes from a single console examined by an independent technician. There’s no data on whether the new cooling runs quieter or cooler, no confirmation that every new PS5 Slim shipping today uses the EDM-051 board, and no official guidance on whether replacing the battery yourself affects your warranty.
Mid-generation hardware revisions are nothing new for Sony, which typically uses them to cut manufacturing costs, simplify assembly or respond to component supply changes. Whether this one delivers meaningful benefits for players or simply makes the console cheaper to build will only become clear once more units are opened and properly tested.
