Der8auer reverse engineers NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition: blown away with findings

OC legend "Der8auer" and his team have reverse-engineered NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card using 3D tools, gives us a deep dive before the GPU releases on January 30. Check it out:

Der8auer and his team's findings are based on what we've seen from NVIDIA already, as well as additional info gained from sources, showing how the company hid the power connector on the RTX 5090 FE within the cool space, leaving the area around the main PCB totally exposed for additional airflow.

The dual-slot design of the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card is an achievement in itself, with Der8auer noting that there are different bends in each fin of the heatsink on the RTX 5090 FE. There are 58 fins on each heatsink stack, noting that what is "kind of unusual and absolutely crazy" is every single fin is bent a little different, as you can see in the shot below.

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NVIDIA has probably done this for some cooling optimization says Der8auer, and that "what's so crazy about this" is the manufacturing of these fins. He goes on to explain that when companies are designing their heatsinks, they'll usually try to make all of the fins exactly the same shape, as they're stamped.

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He continues, saying that NVIDIA probably had to design 58 individual stamping tools: for every single fin, they need a different stamping tool, or it's just not possible to make different curves on the fins inside of the heatsink. Der8auer adds that typically, companies want to be cost-efficient, ideally with just a single fin design... more complex coolers might have 3-5 fin designs, but the RTX 5090 FE had 58 "which is absolutely crazy, and shows the dedication NVIDIA put into design of this cooler, they definitely did not cheap out, not even for a single cent".

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Der8auer is pretty sure that the RTX 5090 FE air cooler is the most expensive that he has ever seen in this industry, even if you compare it to ASUS's new ROG ASTRAL GeForce RTX 5090, a beefy air-cooled custom card -- he notes "they might be big, but they usually use a single or 2-3 different tools for stamping... and not 58".

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition will debut on January 30, and we can't wait... for Der8auer's full deep dive, you should really watch the video in full, a fascinating (and informative) video.