As Xbox One S becomes available the team iFixit got their hands on one of the console to tear it down and show us what makes it tick. And the images reveal some very interesting features.
While the Xbox One S is not a significant upgrade from the original version of the console, the new model includes a SATA III internal hard drive (Seagate Spinpoint M9T ST2000LM003 2 TB 5400 RPM with 32 MB Cache), which is an improvement over the SATA II found the in the original Xbox One.
In theory, you can easily replace the hard drive, but you’ll be voiding the warranty in the process. So, think twice before upgrading it for a speedy SSD. (Keep in mind that you can always add an external hard drive.)
The console also sports a couple of bumpers to keep the optical drive from making a lot of noises — keeping things quiet. Perhaps one interesting thing worth noting is Halo’s Master Chief being part of the optical drive cover.
On this new model of Xbox One, Microsoft is doing away with the power brink by integrating the power supply inside of the console, which is also pretty easy to remove. However, let’s hope the company designed this new power supply perfectly, as it’s not as simple as replacing an external power brick.
Of course, there is a huge fan to keep everything cooled, the motherboard with all its circuitry and the same AMD Jaguar 8-core SoC and new GPU featuring HDR10.
iFixit gives the new Xbox One S a repairability score of 8 out of 10. You can check the rest of the teardown at iFixit.
