Published: February 17, 2025 | Source: ASUS | Author: Tom Logan

ASUS ROG RTX 5090 Astral LC Review

Introduction and Technical Specifications

Introduction

With so many Nvidia graphics card launches recently, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve seen this before. On the one hand it’s the RTX 5090, a card we’ve seen a few of, but not many. Supply issues aren’t limited to shop shelves after all. Secondly, it’s the ASUS ROG Astral. Combine those two things and you get today’s review.

However this model, as you can see from above, this has the added bonus of being liquid cooled. For many years now graphics card drivers have built in overclocking. The cooler the card is running, the faster the clock speeds will go. Higher clock speeds, on the same hardware, will lead to higher performance. Whilst the Blackwell GPU core at the heart of the RTX 5090 runs pretty cool already, beefing it up with a 360mm radiator will only enhance that cooling and increase those vital frames per second.

If you’ve looked at other RTX 5090 cards you’ll be aware that they’re very chunky. Moving to a liquid cooled solution means ASUS have managed to shrink the footprint of the GPU end of the cables significantly. Yes of course you have to be able to fit a 360 radiator into your case along with whatever CPU cooling you have, but this isn’t card for those of you on tight budgets and small cases. Should you have a case that supports a couple of radiators though, fortunately lots do these days, and should you have recovered from Christmas. Perhaps a rich old uncle has kicked the bucket. Your lottery numbers came up. You found a few bitcoin on an old laptop.

Anyway, however you’ve come up with the necessary room and readies, the ASUS ROG RTX 5090 Astral LC should be enough graphics card to keep you satisfied for years.