I don’t find many graphics cards appealing. Without some wild case designs or pre-built desktops designed to deliver looks and power in equal measure, they seem overkill compared to other sleek, understated components. The Nvidia Founders Edition RTX 5090on the other hand, appears downright threatening. It’s a dark gray metal plate, a demanding, brick-like beetle, ready to crawl onto your PSU and consume your PC entirely.
Nvidia sent me the RTX 5090 for review but stipulated that I can’t show it to you under power yet. I can’t even show it snuggled up warm in a desk case. So with these limitations, here are my first impressions.
The RTX 5090 Founders Edition measures approximately 12 inches by 5.3 inches and 2 inches deep. It is approximately the same length and width as Founders Edition RTX 4090 with the same two-fan variation. However, the new map is shorter than the previous one. This is a two-slot card, but that doesn’t mean future OEMs will stick to these dimensions.
But for that, it’s a heavy card. It had been sitting in a cold FedEx truck for so long that the metal was almost painful to touch. Even at room temperature, the GPU felt bulky, with virtually no parts lost in this slab of metal and silicon. It’s the kind of card that makes me nervous about putting it in my case, supported by nothing more than a PCIe slot and two screws.
Compared to the other cards we have on hand, namely a PNY RTX 4080 Super, an Asus RTX 4080 Super and an MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super, all equipped with three fans, the 5090 seems more self-contained. It takes up fewer slots inside your case, but it desperately requires some sort of extra support for any end outside your motherboard.
Nvidia swears that its new cooling device will manage to keep the card cool under pressure. The board’s inlet is below and the exhaust exits through the vents above. This should be suitable for most setups where the airflow is normally from bottom to top.
The weight adds to the overall aesthetic of the Founders Edition. It’s intimidating in metallic gray, especially compared to the silver sides of the RTX 4090. You can see into the GPU when you shine a light on it, enough to see the heat pipes running through it. Otherwise, the glowing GeForce RTX logo still appears when the card is powered on.
The Founders Edition card now comes in a corrugated cardboard box meant to mimic the footprint of the 5090. Inside is the GPU without any anti-static bags or sleeves. This didn’t seem necessary, as the packaging was tight enough to keep it from moving. Besides the card, the case came with a single, short 4x PCIe 5.0 adapter. Nvidia said you’ll either need the adapter connected to four 8-pin PCIe connectors or a 600W PCIe Gen 5 cable.
It also requires at least 1,000W of system power, so if you’re okay with using an RTX 4080 Super with an 850W PSU, that’s yet another item you’ll need to upgrade to support Nvidia’s new GPU.
The 16-pin power connection now sits angled away from the board itself. This can be a boon for smaller cases, but I know in my current setup with the Origin PC it will actually mean I’ll have to twist the power connection to fit it into the correct slots. Behind it, the only ports you’ll find are three DisplayPort 2.1s and a single HDMI 2.1b.