Packaging
If you saw the packaging for the RTX 5090 last week, there aren’t any surprises here and you can go ahead and skip ahead. This just repeats what I touched on then. Nvidia has been experimenting with a few designs including the previous generation of Founders Edition cards which used a corrugated material but the overall design did take up a lot of space. For this generation, the RTX 5080 Founders Edition’s box has a lot going on. The most surprising is that the outer shipping box is officially part of the packaging now where before they did have a shipping box that perfectly fit each card but the box inside was still what you might expect to see on a store shelf. This time around I’m told this brown box is the outer packaging and what retailers who carry the Founders Edition will have. This came to me with the shipping labels on it and also on the outside it has a large white sticker, similar to a laptop box, with the part number, BIOS version, SKU, and everything else printed on it. Where the 5090 had a second information sticker, our 5080 box didn’t have that. The box has a seal that you rip off which reveals the quote “Inspired by Gamers. Enhanced by AI. Built by Nvidia”
When you open the brown box up all of the Nvidia branding is hidden away on the inside, which makes sense. If this is the box it will ship out in, you don’t want it to screen I have an expensive video card in here steal me. The front edge has stripes and the RTX 5080 model name and the stripes and Nvidia branding are on the underside of the lid. The box then has two arrows on the sides, you can pull these out and the side open to make it easier to get to the second box inside. This second box isn’t black like Nvidia has always done. This is also plastic-free where the previous design used a lot of plastic in it. The inner box is inkless and has flaps on the top and bottom edges that once you pull out allow the two halves of the box to come apart. They have die-cut the corrugated cardboard to fit the RTX 5080 Founders Edition inside so that it can't move around. In the past, the documentation and accessories were hidden under the card and that is still partially true here. But now they are hidden under the cool box inside the brown box. There is a smaller box and inside you have the quick start guide and the new power adapter.
The 12VHPWR connection ended up being a point of contention with the last generation of Nvidia’s cards. There were issues with melted connections and a lot of misinformation and quick reactions when it started to happen. The main reason they found was that the connection was sometimes not plugged in tightly and was often in tight bends because of it being on top of the cards. Combine that with a lot of the cables being stiff and you have a recipe for problems. Along with other changes that I will touch on when I get to look at the card itself. Nvidia did change the power adapter cable that comes with the cards. This new adapter has the same three 8-pin PCIe plugs that the 4080 had (this is one less than the 5090 and 4090 have) but they have individually sleeved the cables and made the cable longer. Those two things mean that it is significantly more flexible and won't put as much stress on the connection. The 12VHPWR end is a lot more robust as well with a thick body once you get past the cable needed to terminate all of those sleeved cables.
