Hands-On With the RTX 5090, the Nvidia Big, New GPU

I don’t find many graphics cards attractive. Without some wild case designs or pre-built desktops made to offer looks and power in equal measure, they seem like an excess compared to other sleek, low-profile components. At Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Editionon the other hand, it looks really menacing. It’s a slab of dark gray metal, a demanding beetle, like a brick, ready to pounce on your PSU and completely consume your PC.

Nvidia sent me the RTX 5090 for review, but stipulated that I still can’t show it powered up. I can’t even pretend it’s tucked into a desktop case. So with those limitations, here are my first impressions.

The RTX 5090 Founders Edition is about 12 inches by 5.3 inches and 2 inches deep. It is almost the same length and width RTX 4090 Founders Edition with the same variation of two fans. However, the new card is shorter than the previous one. This is a dual-slot card, but that doesn’t mean any future OEMs will stick to these dimensions.

But because of that, it’s a heavy card. It had been out in a cold FedEx truck for so long that the metal was almost painful to the touch. Even when I had it at room temperature, the GPU felt thick, with virtually no room 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 but a PCIe slot and two screws.

Compared to the other cards we have in hand, namely a PNY RTX 4080 Super, an Asus RTX 4080 Super, and an MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super – all with three fans – the 5090 seems more autonomous. It takes up less slots in your case, but it desperately requires some kind of extra support for whatever ends up sticking out of your motherboard.

Nvidia swears that its new cooling device manages to keep the card cool under pressure. The paper intake is below, and the excavation comes out of the vents above. That should be fine for most configurations where airflow normally goes from the bottom to the top.

The weight adds to the overall aesthetic of the Founders Edition. It’s intimidating in gray metal, 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 that pass through it. Otherwise, it also includes the bright GeForce RTX logo when the card is activated.

The Founders Edition card now comes in a corrugated cardboard box that should emulate the footprint of the 5090. Inside is the GPU without any anti-static bag or sleeve. It didn’t seem necessary, as the packaging was tight enough to prevent it from moving. Besides the card, the box came with a single short 4x PCIe 5.0 adapter. Nvidia said you need the adapter connected to four PCIe 8-pin connectors or a 600W PCIe Gen 5 cable.

It also requires at least 1000 W of system power, so if you feel good about an RTX 4080 Super with an 850 W PSU, that’s another piece you need to upgrade to support Nvidia’s new GPU.

The 16 pin power connection is now located in a corner on the card itself. This can be a benefit for smaller cases, but I know that in my current setup with the Origin PC it really means that I need to twist the power connection to fit it in the correct slots. On the back, the only ports you’ll find are three DisplayPort 2.1 and a single HDMI 2.1b.