Playstation 3 is the latest video game console from Sony. Today we completely disassembled a Playstation 3 (80 GB version)  to show you how it looks like inside and the components used.

But let’s first take an overall look of the Playstation 3 from outside. In case you’ve never seen one, the new Playstation 3 is more like a Home Theater PC (HTPC) that happens to also play games. Or a high-end video game console that also happens to be a media center PC. You decide. It comes with a Blu-Ray player, HDMI output (digital video) supporting full HD resolution (1080p), optical SPDIF (digital audio) output, two USB 2.0 ports, BlueTooth 2.0, Wi-Fi (11 Mbps and 54 Mbps supported), one Gigabit Ethernet port and a SATA 2.5” hard disk drive (80 GB on the model we disassembled). Besides playing games, you can use it to play DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, videos and MP3 and watch photos and since it has built-in networking capability, data can be stored on another device. Complete technical specifications can be found on Playstation’s website. What is really sweet about Playstation 3 is that it costs the same thing that a Blu-Ray player (USD 400), so you can buy it to use as a Blu-Ray player and get a free high-end video game console!

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Figure 1: The Playstation 3.

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Figure 2: The Playstation 3.

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Figure 3: The two USB 2.0 ports on the front panel.

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Figure 4: Connectors from the rear panel.