The RTX 5090 Founders Edition might be svelte but the Asus ROG Astral cards are absolute chonkers

Yesterday seems like forever ago now, doesn’t it? Or that could just be the jetlag ruining my sense of time. Anyway, apparently we had an Nvidia keynote, and apparently the RTX 50-series GPUs were finally unveiled. I seemed to have a whale of a time, as I wrote an article dedicated to nerding out over just how svelte and menacing the new RTX 5090 Founders Edition looks.

Today, however, I visited the Asus suite at CES 2025. And the RTX 5090s I saw were, for lack of a better word, humongous. Chonky. Proper thicc. How about this one for starters:

That’s the Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090, and it is anything but svelte. However, it’s definitely got the intimidation factor nailed down, thanks to a quad fan cooler (three on one side, one on the back).

Asus says the Astral family “was inspired by the limitless expanse and beauty of the cosmos, and it is a testament to an unending dedication to exploring and defining new frontiers.” That’ll be why it’s built a card the size of a small moon, then.

I kid, I kid. Actually, it’s pretty impressive looking in person. In combination with those four fans, Asus has equipped the Astral card with a patented vapor chamber and a phase-change GPU thermal pad. That, in combination with some boosted default clock speeds, should make for a behemoth of a GPU.

I’d like to hear it in action, but alas, these mega GPUs were merely for display. Still, if you thought the regular Astral was big, check out the liquid cooled version:

My god, it’s full of stars. To give it its full title, this is the Asus ROG Astral LC GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB GDDR7 OC Edition. It comes equipped with a full 360 mm big boi AIO cooler, attached by some seriously hefty hoses to a full-coverage copper cold plate, housed deep inside the bowels of the beastly GPU itself.

There’s something about the shroud design that makes the RTX 5090 look like it’s been caged for safety reasons, like Hannibal Lecter. Keep it locked up lest it eat all your games for breakfast, that sort of thing.

This is why I don’t write marketing copy for a living, folks. Too much of a maverick. Anyhoo, prices are yet to be revealed for these two giants—but if I were a betting man I’d say… seriously pricey. I mean, that’s going to be the takeaway from any RTX 5090 edition for the foreseeable future, but all this extra cooling can’t come cheap.

I have to say, though, standing next to these cards in person I couldn’t help but be impressed. Chonky they may be, but there’s something wonderfully overbuilt about both of them that tickles my fancy. One last question comes to mind, however—does the RTX 5090 really need this much cooling if it’s pushed past its default clocks? We’ll have to wait and see, I guess, but I suppose there’s no harm in overdoing it.

Now, I’m off to buy the worlds biggest case to house one of these monster GPUs. Oh, and I’d better buy a lottery ticket while I’m there. That’d probably help, too.