Yesterday looks like eternally in the past now, does not it? Or that may very well be the jet lag ruining my sense of time. Anyway, apparently we had an Nvidia keynote, and apparently the RTX 50-series GPUs had been lastly unveiled. I appeared to have a whale of a time, as I wrote an article devoted to nerding out over simply how svelte and menacing the brand new RTX 5090 Founders Version appears.
Right this moment, nonetheless, I visited the Asus suite at CES 2025. And the RTX 5090s I noticed had been, for lack of a greater phrase, humongous. Chonky. Correct thicc. How about this one for starters:
That is the Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090, and it’s something however svelte. Nevertheless, it is positively bought the intimidation issue nailed down, due to a quad fan cooler (three on one aspect, one on the again).
Asus says the Astral household “was impressed by the limitless expanse and fantastic thing about the cosmos, and it’s a testomony to an never-ending dedication to exploring and defining new frontiers.” That’ll be why it is constructed a card the dimensions of a small moon, then.
I child, I child. Really, it is fairly spectacular trying in individual. Together with these 4 followers, Asus has geared up the Astral card with a patented vapor chamber and a phase-change GPU thermal pad. That, mixed with some boosted default clock speeds, ought to make for a behemoth of a GPU.
I would like to listen to it in motion, however alas, these mega GPUs had been merely for show. Nonetheless, in case you thought the common Astral was massive, take a look at the liquid cooled model:
My god, it is stuffed with stars. To present it its full title, that is the Asus ROG Astral LC GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB GDDR7 OC Version. It comes geared up with a full 360 mm massive boi AIO cooler, hooked up by some severely hefty hoses to a full-coverage copper chilly plate, housed deep contained in the bowels of the beastly GPU itself.
There’s one thing concerning the shroud design that makes the RTX 5090 appear like it has been caged for security causes, like Hannibal Lecter. Preserve it locked up lest it eat all of your video games for breakfast, that form of factor.
That is why I do not write advertising copy for a residing, people. An excessive amount of of a maverick. Anyhoo, costs are but to be revealed for these two giants—but when I had been a betting man I would say… severely dear. I imply, that is going to be the takeaway from any RTX 5090 version for the foreseeable future, however all this further cooling cannot come low cost.
CES 2025
Meet up with CES 2025: We’re on the bottom in sunny Las Vegas protecting all the most recent bulletins from among the greatest names in tech, together with Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Razer, MSI and extra.
I’ve to say, although, standing subsequent to those playing cards in individual I could not assist however be impressed. Chonky they might be, however there’s one thing splendidly overbuilt about each of them that tickles my fancy. One final query involves thoughts, nonetheless—does the RTX 5090 actually need this a lot cooling if it is pushed previous its default clocks? We’ll have to attend and see, I assume, however I suppose there isn’t any hurt in overdoing it.
Now, I am off to purchase the worlds greatest case to deal with one in every of these monster GPUs. Oh, and I would higher purchase a lottery ticket whereas I am there. That’d most likely assist, too.