Thursday, January 9th 2025
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition Hands On, Taken Apart
At the 2025 International CES, we went hands on with the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition "Blackwell" graphics card. This thing is huge—longer and taller than the RTX 4090 FE, and yet just 2 slots thick. This is because NVIDIA's designers have figured out that the heat dissipation area of the heatsink lost to thinning the card can be recovered by stretching it in other directions. The card retains the essential aesthetic of Founders Edition cards from the past two generations going back to the RTX 30-series, but changes the concept of the dual-axial flow-through.
While past generations used an intake fan on one side, blowing onto the PCB, and another fan at the tail end of the backplate pull air through the heatsink and out the back, the RTX 5090 FE has two large fans, both of which blow cold air through the heatsink, and out the back of the card. The PCB is located in the center of the card, and relies on a set of breakout PCBs for host interface and display outputs.
The biggest component on the PCB, which takes up nearly 1/3 of its board area, is the "GB202" GPU on which the RTX 5090 is based. The GPU has a gigantic pin-count not just for its power needs, but its 512-bit GDDR7 memory interface. At one corner of the PCB, which sticks out from the top of the cooler, is the card's 12V2x6 power input, which is rated for 600 W (we don't know the TGP of the RTX 5090 yet).
The card uses a VRM solution with 19 phases for the VGPU, and 8 phases for the memory. Much like an AI GPU board, NVIDIA resorted to high-density PCB engineering, not wasting any space on either sides of the PCB. The chokes and DRMOS (made by MPS) are on the obverse side, surrounding the GPU on three sides; and the capacitors are on the reverse side.
The reverse side of the PCB has connectors that lead to its two breakout components. The first one connects to a PCB with the PCI-Express 5.0 x16 gold fingers. The other connector leads to the display I/O breakout. Both connections are made using thin ribbon cables like the ones you find in laptops, and routed along the edges of the cooler, so as not to impede airflow.
While past generations used an intake fan on one side, blowing onto the PCB, and another fan at the tail end of the backplate pull air through the heatsink and out the back, the RTX 5090 FE has two large fans, both of which blow cold air through the heatsink, and out the back of the card. The PCB is located in the center of the card, and relies on a set of breakout PCBs for host interface and display outputs.
The card uses a VRM solution with 19 phases for the VGPU, and 8 phases for the memory. Much like an AI GPU board, NVIDIA resorted to high-density PCB engineering, not wasting any space on either sides of the PCB. The chokes and DRMOS (made by MPS) are on the obverse side, surrounding the GPU on three sides; and the capacitors are on the reverse side.
The reverse side of the PCB has connectors that lead to its two breakout components. The first one connects to a PCB with the PCI-Express 5.0 x16 gold fingers. The other connector leads to the display I/O breakout. Both connections are made using thin ribbon cables like the ones you find in laptops, and routed along the edges of the cooler, so as not to impede airflow.
93 Comments on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition Hands On, Taken Apart
If Nvidia aims for something truly "remarkable" that actually benefits people, it should be affordability. We can use small pcbs for mobile devices. No need in Desktop space to make cards artificially harder to repair. Signal integrity is the only argument of yours I can agree on.
I think this interview done by PCWorld really helps to explain and understand why Nvidia designed the 50 series Founders Edition this way.
Nvidia Talks RTX 5090 Founders Edition Design
But go on, celebrate this developement further. F the enthousiasts!
The 7090 is just going to be a Geforce now Streaming device then. But I guess people will love it because it looks sleek. You will own nothing and be happy.
90 & 80 are the same, the 3070 is even smaller at 112 x 242 x 40.
The 4090 is like you said at 61mm
Even if people think its childish I doubt anyone gets as much joy from an Apple like experience compared to that.
Still looks a bit thin to me. Especially when you compare it with 4090 FE cooler and 5090 has +125W on top of 4090.
RTX 4090 has much more beefier cooler. Let's see how this RTX 5090 FE fares in terms of fan noise and temps.
If it doesn't, you just added 2 variables (pci-ex and i/o cables) to the mix.
To me its finned heatsink looks undersized for 575w.
Also, cpu air cooling could be seriously affected by this design.