The Nvidia RTX 5090 is the biggest gaming GPU in years, yet the card is ready for SFF

Nvidia has gone ultra-precise with its latest data dump of its upcoming RTX 50-series graphics cards. The die sizes of the AI ​​company’s Blackwell chips have been revealed, and although we already know how big they are RTX 5090 die size It was big, and we now know how big this new chip is.

Despite this increase in chip size, one of the most notable features NvidiaThe RTX 5090 FE’s PCB and heatsink are incredibly small, creating the future Best graphics card The youngest king in three generations.

GB202 is the internal name of the RTX 5090 GPU, and it comes in at 750 square millimeters. The last time Nvidia suffered a death of this magnitude was back under its Turing architecture in 2018. The TU102, which came to market as RTX 2080 Ti Graphics card with an area of ​​754 mm². However, outside of that chip, it has never had a larger GPU for consumer gaming.

However, the rest of the RTX 5000 series lineup tells a different story. Going down the stack, GB203 (RTX 5080 and 5070 if) It comes with a hair smaller than its counterpart in the previous generation. It’s measured at 378 mm² versus the 379 mm² GPU used in the RTX 4080, 4080 Super, and 4070 Ti Super.

GB205, which will be found at RTX 5070It is also smaller than the previous generation. It measures 263 square millimeters, which is much smaller than the RTX 4070 and Ti, which come in at 295 square millimeters. Everything is smaller in this generation, except for the RTX 5090. This is despite Nvidia’s commitment to TSMC’s 4nm manufacturing process.

However, despite being the largest chip in the lineup, the RTX 5090 is one of the smallest flagship Nvidia flagship reference cards in some time. At CES 2025, the company claimed that its Founders Edition could fit into a small-form-factor chassis or mini-ITX PC case, thanks to a clever flow-through cooler design and a compact PCB.

Nvidia has developed Brave RTX 5090 on “High Density PCB”. This essentially crams all the core parts of the main GPU into a tight package and allows Nvidia to build a smaller housing for the card.

A few previous generations haven’t fit into these small office-friendly cases before, with Nvidia’s own RTX 4090 not meeting the requirements for its SFF-Ready software. Online, there are plenty of examples of RTX 4090 cards crammed inside such cases, but not without some extra effort. This is Nvidia’s first real attempt to cater to this audience with such a high-end card.

Nvidia launched SFF is ready program last year, aiming to introduce a checking system for minicomputers that would ensure buyers knew whether a particular case and a particular card were compatible with each other.

After the unveiling of CES 2025 RTX 5000 Series cards, Nvidia’s own Founders Edition 5090 is only rated to fit in a compact case, with other cards from partners like MSI, Palit, PNY and Asus using much larger coolers. Instead, compatibility with those manufacturers’ cards so far tops the list RTX 5080with a few options with this GPU being able to push the limits of SFF-Ready.