The new ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 designs have attracted a lot of attention, due to an unusual cooling configuration that includes a backplate-mounted fourth fan. At CES 2025, MSI teased onlookers with a placard adorned with a GeForce RTX 32G "Lightning" Special Edition model—featuring a "FiveFrozr" cooling solution. A traditional triple-fan setup is placed in the expected shroud location, but two additional units are integrated into the card's backplate. According to recent reports and early reviews, GIGABYTE has deployed a somewhat related system, albeit entirely optional (depending on user discretion). The Taiwanese manufacturer sent its AORUS RTX 5090 and 5080 MASTER models to market last week. These premium card designs feature the company's new "Screen Cooling Plus" system. CES press material claims that the "extra air-boosting fan" grants more airflow.

GIGABYTE's fourth fan has flown under the radar, but major hardware news outlets have just picked up on initial impressions. Singapore's HardwareZone appreciated the inclusion of an optional extra—with their AORUS RTX 5080 MASTER sample—but criticized GIGABYTE's slightly undercooked implementation. Their reviewer did not evaluate whether the modular part made any difference in terms of reducing temperatures—instead, they opined: "to further improve cooling, the card also comes bundled with a separate 120 mm RGB fan that you can place on the back of the card to pull air out—a design reminiscent of the ROG Astral RTX 5080's built-in cooling solution. It's a practical touch but not an elegant one, as it means having to deal with additional cables to tidy up since—oddly enough—the card itself does not come with a power connector for the extra fan." GLITCHED.online, a South African tech site, took GIGABYTE's AORUS RTX 5080 MASTER ICE card for a test drive—they found that the extra bit of cooling potential made a difference, but it was "almost unnoticeable." We hope that GIGABYTE will send review samples to TPU's W1zzard in the near future. Will the fourth fan make any difference on the AORUS RTX 5090 MASTER model?GLITCHED.online elaborated on the topic of their testing methodology: "when it comes to the new Screen Cooling Plus feature, I monitored the temperatures on my PC with and without the extra fan attached to the GPU. Before I get into the stats, the installation of this fan is fairly simple. There is a silicone mount that clips onto the screen cooling hole. You then slide the fan onto the silicone nubs, plug the fan into your dedicated slots, and you're good to go....I ran the (3DMark) Steel Nomad stress test. The fans reached 2050RPM, temperatures maxed at 67C, and the GPU was pulling around 360 W of power. The fans remained around the 2100 RPM with the sensor reading 66 - 67C. Temperatures would hover between 66 and 67C. This would be your best look at standard gaming over a long period of time. Without the fan attached, I ran the same Steel Nomad stress loop. The fans reached 2100 RPM, but this time, I noticed the readings hit 69C instead of 67C. So instead of hovering between 66 and 67C, we're getting 68 and 69C. A two-degree change. I won't even say these two degrees were a constant because it stayed on 68C more than 69C. You'll likely get better results tweaking your system fans to improve cooling in this regard. Of course, different PC builds will result in different scenarios, but I can't say this fan made any drastic difference in performance and cooling."

Skip forward to the 2-minute 25-second mark to watch GLITCHED.online's coverage of the GIGABYTE AORUS RTX 5080 MASTER ICE model's extra cooling fan.


Their test build included the following hardware:

• AMD Ryzen 9 9900X CPU
• 64 GB DDR5 60000 MT/s RAM
• GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Wi-Fi 7 Motherboard
• GIGABYTE AORUS WATERFORCE X II 360 Cooler
• GIGABYTE AORUS GeForce RTX 5080 MASTER ICE
• GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER GAMING OC
• GIGABYTE AORUS C700 GLASS Case