With more power comes greater size. That has been the case for desktop graphics cards, where high-end gaming GPUs have become exponentially more powerful and evolved into triple-slot, triple-fan, fin-stacked beasts. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090, the flagship RTX Blackwell GPU, is on track to become the world's most powerful gaming GPU when it launches on January 30. And ours recently arrived.

Although we can't discuss performance, we can say that it's an engineering marvel that NVIDIA has released an SFF-Ready two-dual flagship GPU with a power rating of 575W. The Founders Edition model sports a brand-new double flow-through thermal design, which is possible thanks to NVIDIA's smaller custom PCB. This means both fans blow directly onto the heat pipes and fins, and in practice, this makes it one of the quietest GPUs out there, according to NVIDIA.
We'll discuss the design in our review, but there are three separate PCBs, 30-phase power delivery circuitry, and some incredibly dense circuitry. The thermal design change also means redesigning NVIDIA's Founders Edition GPU look, and without a doubt, the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition is one of the best-looking cards we've ever seen.

It is sleek, stylish, minimal, and unlike anything else out there. The fans are on one side, and the curved and intricate fin stack is on the other. It's cool that you can see through both fans and the fins on each side.

When the RTX 5090 Founders is placed next to the GeForce RTX 4090 Founder Edition, the 5090 looks positively like something from the future. This is reinforced by the packaging, which is super dense and sturdy, and so small that it's not much larger than the GeForce RTX 5090 it firmly holds. With partner cards using more traditional PCBs and thermal design solutions, the Founders model will be the only two-slot RTX 5090 at launch.
Stay tuned for our full review. In the meantime, here's NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition.






