The upcoming Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition could be much smaller than the RTX 4090, with a cooler that’s just two PCI-E slots wide, according to a new rumor. That compares to three slots wide for the current RTX 4090 FE and even wider for some other RTX 4090 variants.
If this latest Nvidia rumor proves to be true it would give one more very compelling reason for the RTX 5090 to sit unchallenged at the top of our best graphics card guide. After all, it’s expected to be the fastest card ever when it launches, with AMD not expected to release a Radeon RX 8000 card to compete at this high end of the market.
The new rumor comes via serial GPU X/Twitter leaker kopite7kimi, who replied to another tweet speculating as to the size of the RTX 5090 with the words, “No, RTX 5090 FE has a 2-slot cooler.” This original speculation suggested we could finally see the arrival of the ludicrously enormous four-slot cooler that has been leaked previously and was rumored to be designed for the RTX 4090.
While a regular source of leaks and graphics card speculation, kopite7kimi’s word isn’t gospel so this leak certainly needs to be viewed with a degree of skepticism. Not least because even though the RTX 5090 is expected to use a more power-efficient manufacturing process than the RTX 4090, it’s also expected to be a far more powerful card, so we wouldn’t expect its heat output to drop significantly. Unless Nvidia has conjured up some very nifty new cooling solution, it’s still going to need a large cooler.
To this end, kopite7kimi does also “confirm” that the RTX 5090 will use a dual-fan setup, which would at least be the same as on the RTX 4090. They also went on to say that while they don’t know if the card is actually any more efficient, they are “sure the cooling design is more efficient.”
While it’s easy to speculate on the sorts of technologies Nvidia could use to pull heat away from the GPU, such as using an in-built AIO liquid cooler or carbon nanotube-based thermal interface, it still leaves the question of how heat from the heatsink is dissipated. Maybe those two fans just span at 10,000rpm and sounds like a jet engine – wouldn’t that be fun!
Whatever the case, we’re expecting to learn more about the RTX 5090 release date and other future Nvidia Blackwell GPU-based cards later this year. In the mean time, you can learn more about what we are expecting from these cards in our RTX 5080 guide.