ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Boosts Blackwell To Set Six OC Records
Forget for a moment that it's almost impossible to find a GeForce RTX 5090 in stock or that pricing on some of custom models is way above NVIDIA's baseline MSRP for its Founders Edition variant. All that aside, ASUS is touting a rash of world overclocking records achieved with one of its more pricier models, the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 OC Edition. Golf clap?
We have mixed feelings about the braggadocios announcement. On one hand, it feels like ASUS isn't reading the room, particularly the part in its press release where it says the Astral model is "starting to hit the shelves," after which it goes on to recommended pairing the card with either its ROG Thor 1200W Platinum III or ROG Throw 1600W Titanium III power supply.
On the other hand, stock and pricing situation be damned, it's an impressive card and noteworthy that it now owns half a dozen overclocking world records. Specifically, it broke four records and notched two global place records in the following:
- 3DMark Port Royal (LN2 cooling)
- 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme (stock air cooling)
- 3DMark Time Spy Extreme (stock air cooling)
- Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme (LN2 cooling)
- Unigine Superposition 8K Optimized (LN2 cooling)
- GPUPI v3.3 32B (LN2 cooling)
Overclocker 'safedisk' posted the results to HWBot, and according to the individual listings (linked above), four of the six world records were achieved with liquid nitrogen (LN2). The other two kept it simple (and are perhaps able to be reproduced at home, if you can get your mitts on this card) with the card's stock air cooler. And indeed, the custom cooler is one of the highlights of the Astral variant.
"A cutting-edge thermal solution keeps the heavyweight GeForce RTX 5090 GPU cool: a bold quad-fan design and phase-change GPU thermal pad ensure healthy temperatures that boost hardware longevity. Plus, a vapor chamber helps prevent heat buildup—offering one more layer of protection to keep performance at its peak. This card also packs premium power delivery to make sure the GPU gets stable, reliable power," ASUS explains.
Availability aside, the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 OC Edition is an impressive bin. Out of the box, the boost clock defaults to 2,580MH, which is a slighter better than 7% jump versus NVIDIA's reference 2,407MHz boost clock. And in OC mode, the card gooses the boost clock to 2,610MHz, which is around 8.4% higher.
Other highlights include a fell metal diecast shroud, protective PCB coating (making it suitable for extreme cooling methods like LN2 in pursuit of world records), 80 amp MOSFETs for 35% more headroom than standard designs, a "MaxContact" manufacturing technique that ASUS claims results in 5% more surface area for improved thermal efficiency, dual BIOSes, and the ability to detect anomalies across any of the 12 power pins of the 12VHPWR or 12V-2x6 cable when using the Power Detector+ feature within the company's GPU Tweak III utility.
