ASUS's new flagship ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 look stunning

ASUS's new flagship air-cooled and liquid-cooled GPU, the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090, is here and looks impressive. Also available in GeForce RTX 5080 form, the brand-new ROG Astral design is inspired by the "limitless energy of the cosmos" and is tailor-made for enthusiasts and overclockers. It's also ASUS's first quad-fan ROG graphics card.

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ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090

We saw the new GPU up close at CES 2025, and its striking design wowed us before we even had a chance to turn it around. Adding a fourth fan on the rear side of the GPU isn't simply a flex; its pull-trough design increases airflow and air pressure by around 20%.

It also allows for more densely packed fins, reduces hot spots, and opens the door to extreme overclocking that might make it the fastest GeForce RTX 5090 on the market.

As expected, it also includes ASUS's latest premium vapor chamber design and a switch from thermal paste to a phase-change thermal pad that liquefies and fills in all the gaps between the GPU and the heatsink.

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Power delivery has also been stepped up, which we assume is for the 575W GeForce RTX 5090. It has 80-amp MOSFETs and additional monitoring tools and protections that even log power usage over time. It's a formidable GPU and absolutely massive; the quad fans make it a 3.8-slot beast that is also one of the heaviest GPUs we've held to date.

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ROG Astral LC GeForce RTX 5090

For those looking for a liquid-cooled option, there's the ROG Astral LC GeForce RTX 5090 (there's no GeForce RTX 5080 version), an all-in-one closed-loop solution that ships with a 360mm radiator, a full-coverage copper plate, and an integrated fan similar to those seen on the air-cooled variant. It's a much smaller GPU than the air-cooled ROG Astral (without the radiator).

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