Later fat models

Later fat models (SCPH-50000 – 50012)

The SCPH-50000 series is the final revision of the fat PlayStation 2 before the slim redesign. It refined the original design while keeping the same modding-friendly features.

Compared with earlier fats, the SCPH-50000 added an infrared remote receiver for DVD playback and made internal changes to cooling and the disc drive. Crucially, it retains the rear expansion bay, so it still accepts the network adapter and an internal IDE hard drive.

For modding, the late fat is one of the best all-round choices: it supports FreeMcBoot, takes an internal HDD for the fastest Open PS2 Loader performance, and outputs component and RGB video. If you want a single console that does everything, a healthy SCPH-50000-series fat is hard to beat.

As with all fats, the optical drive is the weak point with age — softmodding to load from USB, microSD, or HDD sidesteps disc-read problems entirely.