Card Layout and Photos

The new design for the RTX 5090 Founders Edition is an interesting one in a few ways. What stands out to me is Nvidia has changed the design in a few really big ways but it still somehow just fits with the styling they have been doing for a few generations now. The RTX 5090 Founders Edition is the same 304 length that we saw with the 4090 Founders Edition, same with the 137mm height. So it is still a very large card, you can see that when you look at how much the card sits above the top of the PCI bracket. What is new however is the move to having both fans on one side and this looks a lot more like a traditional card design. They call this a double flow-through design, which uses a blow-through design on both fans. A lot of cards, including the Founders Edition cards have been using one blow-through fan so this is the natural progression. But it does mean that the PCB is all packed into the middle of the card which is interesting. The other big change is in the card's thickness. They have a new SFF focus by making this a 40 mm dual-slot card whereas the flagship cards from the last two generations have all been triple-slot cards. I would still love to see these cards move back down to a size closer to what we used to see, but I think we might be beyond that at this point and a lot of those cases (both full-sized and SFF) that can’t support the longer and taller cards might just be toast. Including my own Caselabs case as well RIP.

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The double flow-through design while keeping the length and height of the old designs means that Nvidia was able to pack in really large fans here. The fans are both 115mm edge to edge and they have 7 large axial blades that blow down into the card. To help with stability the outside of the fans have a ring around it. The fans as well as the centercaps are a very dark grey that goes well with the black shroud design. The shroud is all metal all around the card, giving it a lot of strength (and weight) and these shrouds are what make the Founders Edition designs feel so premium compared to all but the highest-end aftermarket cards. When we look through the fan we can see the blow-through design and if you look closely you might be wondering what on earth is going on at the display connection end of the card. We can see right through there, how are there any connections there at all? Nvidia has a flexible board with high-speed signaling connecting that I/O PCB to the main PCB in the center of the card. They also have a split PCB for the PCIe connection down at the bottom of the card as well.

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With both fans being on the one side the back side of the RTX 5090 Founders Edition now looks like the back side, unlike in the past. This side has the same X shape as the accents that create the infinity loop shape. If you look closely that does have the Nvidia logo etched on it. The RTX 5090 is also printed here in the top section of the middle. The two sides are then just filled with vertical heatsink fins. They are all black and match the card. It is hard to see it but both sides also have a slight shape of the fins that are concave right where the fans are located.

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Up on the top edge of the RTX 5090 Founders Edition Nvidia has put the same backlit GeForce RTX logo that a lot of their cards have had. I do wish that this was the model name itself, not the generic brand name. It’s always fun to be able to show off what card you have, especially when it is a flagship model like the RTX 5090. Also in this area is the power connection and there is a lot there that needs to be touched on. For starters, the connection has been recessed down into the card and set at an angle, similar to how it was on the RTX 3090. With the RTX 4090, it pointed directly up and was flush so all of the connections would end up needing a tight bend right there to fit in most cases. This gives that connection a lot of relief but that isn’t the only change. The other big change is the move from the 12VHPWR connection to what they now call the 12V-2x6. The same power supply cable works with it, the size hasn’t changed at all as well. They have just changed the lengths of the pins inside. The new connection has .25mm longer pins for the 6 main power connections and then the sense pins are 1.5mm shorter. This means that the connection engages better but if you don’t get it plugged in perfectly the sense pins will pick that up and it won’t work rather than have a loose connection and have it melt. This alone is most likely enough to avoid a majority of the issues that happened last generation, but the angled and recessed connection along with the new adapter as well will help avoid issues as well.

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Moving around on the edges of the RTX 5090 Founders Edition doesn’t show too much really. The shroud design wraps around the top, end, and bottom. The two black center sections do have two slots in them for some ventilation in these areas, but that’s it. The shroud also wraps tightly up against the PCB which helps keep air flowing in the directions you want it to go, but it does mean we can’t peek at any of the inside from there. A big benefit with this means that finally, the card isn’t pushing hot air down onto your motherboard, right where a lot of the M.2 slots are hidden away.

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For display connections, the RTX 5090 Founders Edition has four total connections. There are three DisplayPort 2.1 connections and one HDMI down at the bottom. With all of the board features, what I might be the happiest about is the move to a proper black PCI bracket. Not only does it better match the card, but once installed in a PC it should also match your case a lot better as well.

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Getting the RTX 5090 Founders Edition sitting next to the previous RTX 4090 Founders Edition puts the RTX 5090 Founders Edition’s size into perspective. It has the same shape from the side profile with the same height, length, and even the bends on the ends. The end view however shows the big difference in width. I also have a shot with the power adapters plugged in and this does a great job of showing how the new adapter and the revised angle of the connection change how the power connection on top works. I don’t mind a top connection when it is angled like this to make it easier to route but the old design with the plug going directly up and also being flush to the top of the card makes it hard to fit these tall cards in a lot of cases without putting the connection under a lot of strain, the new adapter is more flexible, is long enough to extend past the end of the card so you don’t have a mess of PCIe power connections all on top of the card and the connection is now recessed and angled so there is almost no need to bend the cables at all.

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I mentioned the lighting, but because most of it is hidden it's better to see when everything is lit up. So before getting into testing, I did get a few pictures of the double V accents on both sides as well as the backlit GeForce RTX branding on top. The white looks good, I do wish they were RGB because part of me thinks this would be cool in the old Nvidia green or being able to match it to my build. Being white though, it shouldn’t clash at least.

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