Yesterday looks as if without end in the past now, would not it? Or that might simply be the jetlag 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 Edition appears.
Today, 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. Proper thicc. How about this one for starters:
That’s the Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090, and it’s something however svelte. However, it is undoubtedly received the intimidation issue nailed down, because of a quad fan cooler (three on one aspect, one on the again).
Asus says the Astral household “was impressed by the limitless expanse and great 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 scale of a small moon, then.
I child, I child. Actually, it is fairly spectacular trying in particular person. In mixture with these 4 followers, Asus has outfitted the Astral card with a patented vapor chamber and a phase-change GPU thermal pad. That, together with some boosted default clock speeds, ought to make for a behemoth of a GPU.
I’d like to listen to it in motion, however alas, these mega GPUs had been merely for show. Still, when you thought the common Astral was massive, try the liquid cooled model:
My god, it is filled with stars. To give it its full title, that is the Asus ROG Astral LC GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB GDDR7 OC Edition. It comes outfitted with a full 360 mm massive boi AIO cooler, hooked up by some significantly hefty hoses to a full-coverage copper chilly plate, housed deep contained in the bowels of the beastly GPU itself.
There’s one thing in regards to the shroud design that makes the RTX 5090 seem like it has been caged for security causes, like Hannibal Lecter. Keep it locked up lest it eat all of your video games for breakfast, that kind of factor.
This is why I do not write advertising copy for a dwelling, people. Too a lot of a maverick. Anyhoo, costs are but to be revealed for these two giants—but when I had been a betting man I’d say… significantly expensive. I imply, that is going to be the takeaway from any RTX 5090 version for the foreseeable future, however all this additional cooling cannot come low-cost.
CES 2025
Catch up with CES 2025: We’re on the bottom in sunny Las Vegas overlaying all the most recent bulletins from a number of 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 particular person I could not assist however be impressed. Chonky they could 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 really want this a lot cooling if it is pushed previous its default clocks? We’ll have to attend and see, I suppose, however I suppose there is not any hurt in overdoing it.
Now, I’m off to purchase the worlds greatest case to accommodate certainly one of these monster GPUs. Oh, and I’d higher purchase a lottery ticket whereas I’m there. That’d in all probability assist, too.
