Regardless of the console’s orientation.
For the PlayStation 5, Sony employed liquid metal in the cooling assembly to enable peak performance without overheating under heavy loads. However, this solution has shown vulnerabilities: over time the liquid metal can migrate and leave dry, oxidized patches on critical components, which may lead to malfunctions and thermal issues.
Although Sony introduced refinements in the PlayStation 5 Pro and some later revisions of the standard model (for example, CFI-2100 and CFI-2116) — adding fins and grooves to the heatsink to better retain the material — the problem has not been fully eliminated.
Service technician and modder Modyfikator89 disassembled a PS5 Slim CFI-2016 less than 1.5 years old that had been kept upright since purchase. The APU die showed dried, oxidized remnants of liquid metal that had clumped and lost thermal conductivity. The issue stems not from the console’s position but from the application quality and degradation over time and with temperature.
Source: iXBT.games