The RTX 5080 Noctua Edition is one of the most overbuilt RTX 50 series graphics cards on the market, featuring three NF-A12x25 G2 fans installed above a massive heatsink boasting 11 heatpipes. Such a design would logically have been perfect for an RTX 5090 model, and according to Kitguru, Noctua thinks so as well. However, it turns out Nvidia is the bottleneck preventing an RTX 5090 Noctua Edition from existing.
KitGuru talked with Noctua's Jakob Dellinger, who divulged that Nvidia does not have enough GB202 chip production "at the moment" to build an RTX 5090 Noctua Edition graphics card. This problem is likely why Noctua has never built an xx90-series RTX graphics card so far. The only graphics cards it has built with Asus are cards based on the RTX 5080, RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4080, RTX 3080, and RTX 3070.
However, Dellinger did discuss what an RTX 5090 Noctua Edition could look like if events ever change. Noctua would allegedly focus on changing the heatsink design to be more optimized for the RTX 5090, potentially using a vapor chamber design similar to the Asus ROG Astral. The RTX 5080 Noctua Edition model's 11 heatpipes could also potentially be switched to 8mm heatpipes entirely for this theoretical RTX 5090 version. By comparison, the RTX 5080 model comes with four 6mm heatpipes and seven 8mm heatpipes.
Nvidia's difficulty producing GB202 dies is something it has been struggling with since Blackwell debuted, thanks to the RTX 5090's insane market demand since its release earlier this year. Even to this day, RTX 5090 AIB partner cards are regularly priced hundreds of dollars above MSRP. This problem has been compounded by Nvidia releasing more GB202-powered GPUs recently, including the Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell workstation and server edition graphics cards.
It's a real shame we probably won't see an RTX 5090 Noctua Edition graphics card for the foreseeable future. Noctua and its partnership with Asus have produced some of the most overbuilt air-cooled Nvidia graphics cards ever created, with cooling performance that can compete with AIO and water-block cooled GPUs. The RTX 5090's sky-high 575W TDP makes it the perfect candidate for Noctua to put its cooling experience to good use.
The RTX 5080 Noctua Edition is the latest GPU to come out of Noctua's partnership with Asus, featuring a first-ever triple-fan cooler design for a Noctua GPU cooling solution. As a result, combined with the aforementioned NF-A12x25 G2 fans, Noctua's RTX 5080 variant allegedly produces some of the most competitive cooling and acoustical performance behavior out of any RTX 5080 to date. Noctua's own testing claims the RTX 5080 Noctua Edition produces 1.7C lower VRAM, 6.2C lower GPU, and 14.5C lower dB(A) temperatures and noise compared to the Asus RTX 5080 ROG Astral.
Cooling performance is so good on the RTX 5080 Noctua Edition, that Noctua benchmarked its card at just 500RPM, achieving 74.6C GPU temperatures, which is more than acceptable temperatures for modern Nvidia GPUs. By contrast, the Asus ROG Astral model is barely able to keep GPU temps under 90C at the same RPM.
If Noctua gets around to making an RTX 5090 version with the same cooler design, it could very well be the best air-cooled RTX 5090 on the market.
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