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Asus reveals how $500,000 ROG Astral RTX 5090D was made — world's most expensive GPU is hewn from 5KG of pure gold
Asus China influencer Uncle Tony has shared a video (Chinese language) on social media which reveals how the world’s most expensive graphics card was made (h/t VideoCardz). We aren’t talking about the lavish $10,000 ROG Astral RTX 5090 Golden Dhabab here, which seems like a tinsel toy compared to this custom, solid cast gold design. This most opulent one-off graphics card is constructed with approximately 5kg (11 pounds) of pure gold and is worth a cool $500,000. We first saw this card showcased at BiliBili World 2025 this summer.
After a short and silly intro, Tony’s video gets into the serious business of crafting the titular precious metal-framed graphics card. His assistant acquires 5kg of gold, and then he gets down to taking apart a ‘regular’ ROG Astral, in order to make casting molds to replace its structure with real gold. This is fun to watch, and even if you don’t know a word of Mandarin, the step-by-step process is easy to grasp.
During the process, we see the gold being melted, poured into the carefully prepared molds, and taken out for fine finishing. Finally, after many false starts and casting errors over several months of work, Tony could reconstruct his ROG Astral, with the real gold parts fitted.
As well as the solid gold elements we see made, the cooling assembly, with its many fins, is seen being plated with gold. The result is a pleasingly finely detailed yet garishly gleaming graphics card, dripping in genuine gold.
Gold content: 5kg vs 6.5g (11 pounds vs a quarter ounce)
The contrast between this custom model and the ‘standard’ Asus ROG Golden Dhabab is pretty stark – not just in pricing. This custom model weighs 7.6kg (16.8 pounds), of which about 5kg (11 pounds) is solid gold. The mass-produced model weighs 7.2kg (15.9 pounds), but a mere 6.5g (~a quarter ounce) of that is actually real gold.
According to the VideoCardz report on this bling-tastic graphics card, the planned charity auction for Uncle Tony's custom solid gold RTX 5090D isn’t going to go ahead. Instead, this hand-finished half-million-dollar graphics card has already been secured by a private collector.
Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
