As they do with most shiny new gaming tech, the brave folks at iFixit have taken apart Microsoft’s smaller, slightly faster Xbox One S to see how repairable it is (very) and answer questions like “Is the hard drive easier to upgrade?” (hahahaha no).
It’s surprising how few things go into assembling a system capable of doing whatever it is the Xbox One does while occupying a much smaller space. That final breakdown up there shows what, 13 things? Motherboard, cooling fan, heatsink dealie, HDD drive, wifi board, optical drive and several bits that make up the system’s best new feature, the internal power supply.
It’s a much smaller brick that fits in the case. Hell, the entire system isn’t much bigger than the original’s power brick. It’s what I find most tempting about the idea of swapping one of my Xbox Ones out for the newer model.
And here’s the hard drive. Good news, it’s a type III SATA drive, an upgrade from the older model’s type II.
Bad news, still not getting at that puppy without tossing your warrantly out the window and performing fancy formatting tricks. At least it comes in 2TB sizes, and it’s so small that a clip-on external drive assembly wouldn’t be too obnoxious.
Checkout iFixit’s full teardown for a comprehensive look at what’s inside the Xbox One S, from case to controllers.
Update: Yeah, yeah. A 2TB SSD would have been nice. Obviously I meant IDE.