Yesterday we published our review of the ASUS RTX 5080 Noctua Edition, a collaborative effort between the two companies that features a quad-slot cooler, three Noctua NF-A12-x25 G2 fans and a custom heatsink sporting no less than eleven heatpipes. We called it ‘a highly impressive feat of engineering', but were left wondering why ASUS and Noctua put so much effort in for an RTX 5080, rather than go all out on an RTX 5090 model. Noctua has since confirmed to us they would ‘love' to make an RTX 5090 version, but it doesn't sound like it will be happening any time soon.
Considering all the technical wizardry, research and development, along with raw material cost that goes into a product like the ASUS RTX 5080 Noctua Edition, it's understandable that something like that comes with a price premium. However, in this instance, the card retails for £1500 here in the UK, making it a whopping 65% more expensive than the RTX 5080's new MSRP of £909.
Given that ASUS and Noctua have gone to such effort and expense for an RTX 5080, we couldn't help but wonder why the two companies didn't team up for an RTX 5090 model. After all, it's the current Nvidia consumer flagship and is considerably faster than the RTX 5080, surely making it a perfect fit for a collaboration like this.
As it turns out, Noctua told us they would be very keen to make an RTX 5090 Noctua Edition, but there's one key issue standing in their way. As communicated by Jakob Dellinger, Noctua PR and Product Management, the company would ‘love to do a 5090' and ‘completely agree that this would be a perfect fit.' But as it turns out, chip supply for the 5090 is simply too scarce to make it happen ‘at the moment.'

While that certainly doesn't rule out the prospect of an RTX 5090 Noctua Edition hitting the market in the future, it also doesn't sound like it's going to happen any time soon. With allocation being the key issue, Nvidia would simply have to produce more GB202 dies for the consumer space, and we all know most of those are ending up in AI and datacenter products like the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell, at significantly higher prices.
Dellinger did offer some information on what an RTX 5090 Noctua Edition could look like though, stressing that the following is completely speculative but that Noctua would focus on changes to the heatsink compared to the RTX 5080 model. Dellinger added that Noctua could use a similar vapour chamber design to the ASUS RTX 5090 Astral, given the top of the vapour chamber has been milled to allow the heatpipes to be attached without flattening them out. As we'd expect, this would have cost implications but could offer extra thermal performance required for cooling the higher-power die, while the switch to all 8mm heatpipes (instead of 4x 6mm and 7x 8mm pipes on the 5080 Noctua Edition) was also mooted.
Whatever it would look like, we would certainly love to get hands-on with an RTX 5090 Noctua Edition, so fingers crossed it becomes a reality in the future.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
KitGuru says: Would you be keen to see Noctua's take on an RTX 5090?
The post
Exclusive: Noctua confirms it wants to make an RTX 5090 Noctua Edition first appeared on
KitGuru.