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

I don’t find many graphics cards attractive. Unless some of the wild case designs or pre-built desktops are built to deliver looks and power in equal measure, they seem redundant compared to other sleek, low-profile components. Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders EditionOn the other hand, appears absolutely terrifying. It’s a slab of dark gray metal, a demanding, brick-like beetle ready to leech at your PSU and devour your PC entirely.

Nvidia sent me the RTX 5090 to review but stipulated that I couldn’t show it powered up yet. I can’t even show it snuggled up warm in a desktop case. So with that limitation, here are my first impressions.

The RTX 5090 Founders Edition is about 12 inches by 5.3 inches and 2 inches deep. That is roughly the same length and width RTX 4090 Founders Edition with the same two-wing variation. But the new card is smaller than the previous one. It’s a two-slot card, though that doesn’t mean any future OEMs will maintain these dimensions

But for him, it’s a heavy card. It had been in a cold FedEx truck for so long that the metal was almost painful to touch. Even when I kept it up to room temperature, the GPU felt crisp, with virtually no room wasted on this slab of metal and silicon. It’s a card that makes me nervous to put it in my case, supported by nothing more than a PCIe slot and two screws.

Compared to other cards we had on hand, such as a PNY RTX 4080 Super, an Asus RTX 4080 Super, and an MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super – with three fans – the 5090 seems more self-contained. It takes up less slot inside your case, but it desperately demands some sort of extra support for any edges sticking out of your motherboard.

Nvidia swears that its new cooling equipment will manage to keep the card cool under pressure. The card’s intake is at the bottom, and exhaust comes out of the top vents. This should be fine for most setups where airflow usually goes from bottom to top.

The weight adds to the overall aesthetic of the Founders Edition. It’s scary in gray metal, especially compared to the RTX 4090’s silver side. You can see into the GPU when you shine a light on it, just enough to see the heat pipes running through it. Otherwise, it includes the bright GeForce RTX logo even when the card is powered on.

The Founders Edition card now comes in a corrugated cardboard box that mimics the 5090’s footprint. Inside is the GPU without any anti-static bag or sleeve. It didn’t seem necessary, as the packaging was tight enough to make it move. Other than the card, the box came with a single, short 4x PCIe 5.0 adapter. Nvidia said You’ll need either an adapter fitted with four PCIe 8-pin connectors or a 600W PCIe Gen 5 cable.

It requires at least a 1000 watt system power, so if you’re okay with running an RTX 4080 Super with an 850 W PSU, that’s one more part you’ll need to upgrade to support Nvidia’s massive new GPU.

The 16-pin power connector now sits in one corner of the card. This might be a boon for smaller cases, but I know in my current setup with the Origin PC it would actually mean I’d have to twist the power connection to fit in the correct slot. On its back, the ports you’ll find are three DisplayPort 2.1 and a single HDMI 2.1b.