NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 50 Founders Edition thermal solution teardown: dual-slot, 600W cooling

NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 50 series Founders Edition graphics cards have been through a teardown experience, revealing the exciting new "Double Flow Through" thermal design, check it out:

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The first big change to in-house GeForce graphics cards was with the GeForce GTX 10 series, with NVIDIA introducing a blower-style cooler, upgrading with the RTX 20 series to a dual axial design, which was the first time axial fans were used inside of a Founders Edition cooler.

After that, NVIDIA used dual-axial flow-through designs, with one fan on the front and another on the back. NVIDIA increased the size of the GeForce RTX 30 and RTX 40 series Founders Edition coolers, with up to a 3-slot design on the RTX 3090 and RTX 4090 series GPUs. All of that changes with Blackwell, with the new RTX 50 series FE designs using a slick dual-slot cooler for the flagship GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition.

• Read more: Der8auer reverse engineers RTX 5090 Founders Edition: blown away with findings
• Read more: Brazilian modders prep for RTX 5090: memory mods to 32Gbps GDDR7
• Read more: RTX 50 review embargoes: RTX 5090 on January 24, RTX 5080 on January 30

NVIDIA has created a new thermal design for the RTX 50 series FE cards, with the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition rolling out with a dual-slot design, meaning that even SFF gaming PCs can have the very best GPU on the market inside.

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NVIDIA is using a 3D vapor chamber that sits on top of the compact PCB in the middle, taking the heat from the GPU and the rest of the components (GDDR7 memory chips, power circuitry, etc) and distributes it over 5 huge heat pipes. They're then attached to 3 separate pieces of heatsink, with multiple aluminum fins.

The two heatsink blocks on the sides will connect over the heat pipes, while the heatsink in the middle will be attached under the PCB, with 2 fans that are based on axial technology, blowing air through the fin stacks.

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NVIDIA says that its new GeForce RTX 50 series Founders Edition cooler is much quieter than previous generations, with the RTX 20 coming in both dual-slot and dual-axial designs with up to 50dBA of noise for 300W of heat, while a dual-slot and flow-through design shoots up those noise levels, with up to 400W TDP. The new RTX 50 FE cards can reach just 30-35dBA, with loads of up to an incredible 600W!