There were quite a few rumors about an all-new Xbox console this year.
Indeed, Microsoft disappointed us slightly in June when it didn’t launch the cylindrical Xbox Brooklin re-work of the Xbox Series X, instead announcing a (very welcome) white all-digital version alongside a bigger 2TB ‘Galaxy Black’ version of the original (which looks absolutely fantastic). Check out our pictures of the white Series X.
In its blog post at the time, Microsoft said that these now-released options offer the “same speed and performance” as the original 2020 Xbox Series X. That’s fine, although it’s actually not quite true.
Microsoft doesn’t seem to want to say the 2024 versions of the Xbox Series X offer improvements over its original model. And I guess it especially doesn’t want to say that they have improved performance. After all, they’re not an equivalent mid-life re-work akin to the incoming PS5 Pro.
But now these consoles have been launched, a teardown has noted that there are actually quite a few enhancements internally which has had a knock-on effect on power consumption and efficiency of the new models. These were spotted by YouTuber Austin Evans.
Firstly, the motherboard has been completely redesigned, with various components that are now smaller and some that have shifted position.
More crucially, the SoC (System on Chip) at the heart of the Series X is now a more efficient 6nm version of the custom AMD Zen 2 chip.
What we don’t know is if this will be coming to the standard black 1TB model as well – you’d assume so.
There is also a revised heatsink this time around which now seems to have a more traditional copper pipe design rather than liquid cooling. It’s tempting to say it just didn’t need it, but then Evans also noted that the new console kicks out just as much heat as the old model and is just as noisy. Could it have been made more efficient with an all-new design that also got rid of those ageing USB-A ports?
Notably, the 1TB all-digital version just has a blank space where the drive was, rather than putting something useful there or saving space (just like with the all-digital Series S).
One thing is for sure, Evans found that the new console consumes less power at all times. When idling, the original Series X consumed around 61W. The 2024 versions are significantly lower than this at 51/38W for the new 2TB and 1TB models.
When playing games, this was at 167W for the original Series X compared to 151/156W for the new models. So while in play it’s a modest energy saving, but it’s still very welcome.