GeForce RTX 5090 FE: The innovative three-part PCB was already known in May 2024 7 comments
Image: Vaidyanathan S (X)
In May 2024, a rumor circulated on Chinese industry forum Chiphel that the GeForce RTX 5090 would hit the market with a three-piece PCB. It sounded crazy, but that’s how it happened; exactly in the form described eight months ago.
The PCB was already “known” in May 2024
Because leaker Panzerlied’s first statement that the PCB would have three parts was followed a few hours later by an addition from leaker kopite7kimi, who spoke of a “motherboard”, an “IO board” and a “PCIe slot component, also called the third PCB could review,” said. It is actually impossible for board partners to know the FE PCB design at such an early stage; the sources must have been elsewhere.
During the presentation of the GeForce RTX 5000 series on Tuesday evening, Nvidia had already shown an extremely compact “motherboard”, called “compute card”, located centrally under the cooler and thus confirmed, although not also shown, that There should have been two additional components: one that offers the PCIe slot and one with the display connectors.
Nvidia RTX 50 Tech Day Impressions
At a so-called Tech Day outside of CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Nvidia presented the Compute Board to invited journalists. Wolfgang Andermahr, editor-in-chief of Techoutil, was also invited, but could not make it to the USA in time due to the snow chaos at Amsterdam airport (details in the current CB podcast Radio #99).
However, the colleagues present have now seen and photographed the compact core of the GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition with GB202 GPU, 32 GB GDDR7 and full power supply (on the back for the first time).
The images on the back also show the two sockets to which the ribbon cables are connected to connect the motherboard to the I/O and PCIe cards. However, these two constituent elements were still not visible on site.
The RTX 5080 is also “split into three parts”
The new PCB layout allowed Nvidia to give the 575-watt TDP RTX 5090 a cooler that’s just two slots wide and 12 inches long, and both fans can blow through it. the cooler without being disturbed. However, tests will still have to show whether this is ultimately enough to dissipate the higher waste heat without volume increase compared to the RTX 4090.
The same approach is used on the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition with a TDP of 360 watts, whose cooler has the same dimensions. The smaller GeForce RTX 5070 with a TDP of 250 watts and a smaller cooler, on the other hand, uses a conventional layout.
Partners rely on classic printed circuits
There will be no “FE” on the RTX 5070 Ti – and according to images of the GeForce RTX 5000 series custom designs, the partners will all rely on conventional PCBs.
Price, specifications, DLSS 4: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti and 5070 in detailNvidia DLSS 4 in detail: multi-frame generation and a new neural networkNvidia Reflex 2 in detail: here’s how frame warping reduces latency in all Scenarios Overview of key data from the GeForce RTX 5000 series model GeForce RTX 5090 GeForce RTX 5080 GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GeForce RTX 5070 Architecture Blackwell Blackwell Blackwell Blackwell GPU* GB202-300 GB203-400 GB203-300 GB205-300 Active CUs (chip*) 170 (192) 84 (84) 70 (84) 48 (50) active shaders 21760 10752 8960 6144 Clock Speeds Boost/Base 2410/2010 2620/2300 2450/2300 2510/2160 Memory 32 GB GDDR7 16 GB GDDR7 16 GB GDDR7 12 GB GDDR7 memory interface 512-bit 256-bit 256-bit 192-bit Memory throughput 28 Gbps 30 Gbps 28 Gbps 28 Gbps Bandwidth 1792 GB/s 960 GB/s 896 GB/s 672 GB/s s PCI Express 5.0 x16 5.0 x16 5.0 x16 5.0 x16 TDP 575 W 360 W 300 W 250 W Founders Edition Yes Yes No Yes 2 slots (304 mm) 2 slots (304 mm) – 2 slots (242 mm) Electrical connection (min.) 1x 12V-2×6 (600 watts) 1x 12V-2×6 (min. 450 watts) 1x 12V-2×6 (min. 300 watts) 1x 12V-2×6 (min. 300 watts) I/O 3× DisplayPort 2.1b
1 × HDMI 2.1 3 × DisplayPort 2.1b
1 × HDMI 2.1? 3 × DisplayPort 2.1b
1× HDMI 2.1 DLSS DLSS 4 DLSS 4 DLSS 4 DLSS 4 AI TOPS 3,352 1,801 1,406 988 Market launch January 30, 2025 January 30, 2025 February February RRP (VAT included) 2,329 euros 1,169 euros 879 euros 649 euros * unconfirmed Topics: CES 2025 GeForce GeForce RTX 50 graphics cards Nvidia Nvidia Blackwell Nvidia CES 2025 press conference
An engineer by training, Alexandre shares his knowledge on GPU performance for gaming and creation.
