ASUS

GeForce RTX 5090 Could Sport A Massive 600W GPU Cooler To Chill Blackwell

The ASUS Strix GeForce RTX 4090 has one of the most gloriously massive coolers ever attached to a powerful GPU. It is long, wide, tall, and expansive in every other direction you can imagine for the simple sake of overkill-tier cooling. According to some recent murmurs from BenchLife, NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce RTX 5090 may be facing a similar trajectory with its air cooler. 

NVIDIA is no doubt testing various cooler designs for its upcoming Blackwell GPU lineup, chief of which will include taming the supposedly ultra-powerful RTX 5090. The RTX 4090 carried with it a TDP of 450 watts, but some bespoke models could theoretically get up to the 600 watt mark. The RTX 5090 appears to be no different, as the increased power allotment allows for it to push performance even further. 

While the RTX 5090 is supposedly launching second after the RTX 5080, it remains the halo product that draws the admiration of gamers the world over, and gives NVIDIA the most bragging rights.

For practical purposes, many of the GeForce RTX 4080 cards (Including the Super variant) shared the same cooler sizes as several RTX 4090 GPUs. The lower 320 watt TDP of the RTX 4080 made this even more overkill, but assisted in economies of scale for manufacturers. 

In recent years, NVIDIA has made strides with its Founders Edition GPU cooler designs. Evolving from the blower style coolers of the GTX 10 series, it slowly progressed forward with the dual fan design of the RTX 2080 Ti, for example. The RTX 30 series brought entirely new concepts to bare, which were further tweaked with the eventual RTX 40 series lineup. 

The current RTX 4090 cooler for NVIDIA's Founders Edition model has proved popular and quite capable of handling the thermal loads of this GPU. Whether the Blackwell-based RTX 5090 will have a 600 watt TDP is up for debate, as the 12VHPWHR connector is at its limits there. It can still have that capability, to have massive overhead if the TDP ends up being much less. 

There has been one drawback with the large RTX 4090 cooler designs, to the chagrin of some. The very wide and over-the-top size of many coolers has given trouble to many PC builders who cannot fit them properly in standard cases. This has raised the call for differently angled cables, even angled adapters. Unfortunately, many issues have arisen, with some such adapters undergoing a complete recall. If the air cooler sizes were smaller, there likely would be less reason to bend cables or use third-party adapters. 

Efficiency while providing class-leading power has been a hallmark of the RTX 40 series, not to mention the power savings when combined with NVIDIA's DLSS 3. The RTX 5090 will no doubt be powerful, and likely demand significant power to keep it satisfied. The cooler attached to it will have not only performance considerations, but also aesthetic impact for consumers. 

mundophone