With the RTX 5090 now here, there’s been a lot of chatter about custom AIB cards, especially as some brands are introducing completely new lineups including what we have here today in the way of the RTX 5090 ROG Astral from ASUS. A card that had everyone talking when they unveiled it at CES, and for us, we wanted to put it through its paces to see if the sheer size of it can offer anything over the Founders Edition, which as we know has been on a bit of a diet, now coming in as a dual-slot card, so today we’ll be putting it through its paces.
So before we jump right in, let me start by saying that this is still an RTX 5090, and we’ve already taken a look at the Founders card from NVIDIA, so I don’t want to stomp over old ground in the sense of showing what a GB202-400 GPU can do because we already know what it’s capable of, though we will look at a smattering of games to make sure that performance on this card does at least align with where it should.
Beyond that, with custom AIB cards, it’s all about design, aesthetics, functionality, extra added features, and most importantly, the cooling performance in terms of fan speed, temperatures, and what that ultimately means for clock speeds, which naturally, being a custom card comes with a slight overclock when it comes to the boost clock of 2580MHz which is 173MHz faster when compared to NVIDIA’s MSRP based 5090 Founders card which means that the Astral comes in packing 7% more in terms of clock speed, so it’ll be interesting to see what that means for overall frame rates, and especially when we compare pricing, which we’ll wait a little before revealing that.
So what is the Astral range of cards all about? What does it offer to the market that we’ve not already seen? Well the big obvious one is going to be that it’s the first ROG quad-fan card, and they’ve developed it in a really unique way, because while the front looks pretty typical with 3 axial tech fans, this card now includes a fourth fan on the rear which ASUS claim that it creates a vertical airflow channel that boosts air pressure by up to 20% which should lower GPU temperature and help to minimise hotspots, which in turn will help sustain levels of boost in terms of the clock speed. Now obviously a lot of this could be marketing bumpf, and that’s where we come in to put it to the test, because what are we here for, if not to hold brands to account for what they claim to be and do with their products?
In addition to the unique fan design, ASUS also claim that the fourth fan allows them to pack the heatsink fins in more densely to increase cooling potential along with a patented vapour chamber design which allows the heatpipes to sink in without flattening and in turn helps with heat dissipation by up to 10%.
Now speaking of percentages, the ASUS bold claims go even further with their MaxContact design. They claim another 5% improved thermal efficiency, just by using a unique and exclusive manufacturing technique to increase the surface area of the heatspreader giving us up to 2 degrees cooler temperatures, though it’s always interesting when they make these claims, as we can’t compare it to the same card without this tech, so we kind of have to take their word on it.
Now one area that’s interesting, especially as we work quite closely on occasion with Thermal Grizzly is the inclusion of a phase-change thermal pad. By using a thermal conductor that changes its matter when heated, it not only should provide much better thermal properties, but should also allow for much better contact, and longevity, because we’ve all been there when its time to replace our thermal paste, and you find it crumbles into pieces, and with GPUs, it’s a much tricker task than with a processor.
When compared to the FE model from NVIDIA though, what’s more interesting is how NVIDIA have spent effort shrinking down their PCB, and with ASUS, we’ve gone back to a more traditionally sized board.
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