PS5 won't fully boot as it thinks there's an incompatible NVMe installed

Hello everyone, :wave:

I need some help to see what I can do to get this fixed or what may need to be fixed.

Quick recap: Over the last few months I noticed my PS5 crashing while playing some games. I decided to remove my USB HDD and my NVMe - opened the PS5 to clean the heatsinks, but it all back together and did a factory reset.

My guess was that the NVMe was the issue so over the past 2 weeks I played without it and no issues at all.

Now: Today I got a brand new SSD (WD_Black SN850) and still no luck - I didn’t even recognise that there’s a NVMe installed.

I once again open the PS5 and use canned air and a plastic brush to clean it. Put it back together and now it’s even worse.

I put the NVMe back in - this time I get a notification saying that my SSD is not supported and need to be removed.

Now I did that and did another factory reset (via Safe Mode) - and even without the SSD it thinks there’s a incompatible SSD installed and the only thing I can do is to turn off my PS5.

Any clue what the issue might be? Happy to bring it to a repair shop to replace the M.2 slot if it’s likely to be the problem

TLDR: installed a new SSD, and even without one installed, PS5 thinks there’s (an incompatible) one and won’t fully boot up.