ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20 review

The ROG Astral RTX 5090 Edition 20 is a card you also buy to look at. Its size, gold details and screen make a strong impression. After a week in our Edition 20 build, its finish and quietness stand out most. In games, however, we felt no difference from the Astral Black and White cards we had already tried. At this price, you really need to want this particular edition.

Our partner Absolute PC purchased the sample. At the time of our test, it cost €6,600 at Absolute PC. Prices our editorial team found at other retailers reached €7,499.95.

After the other Edition 20 components, especially the motherboard in its suitcase, the Astral’s box feels almost disappointing. The accessory bundle seemed a little sparse at this price. We would have liked the same sense of extravagance from the moment we opened it.

ASUS lists an Edition 20 support bracket, a collectible item and a keycap among the accessories [1]. Despite these touches, we expected more at this price.

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In the hand, the weight, size and design impress. The finish is on the same level as the RTX 5090 ROG Astral and Matrix models we have handled. The gold details add a lovely touch without the card needing anything more to catch the eye.

ASUS describes a transparent glass backplate and a removable curved AMOLED screen [2]. In our build, the screen stays fully visible. It is bright and looks very good, like the Ryujin’s. We kept their synchronised display in ASUS InfoHub Edition 20, which worked without trouble. A small detail, perhaps, but the least we expect from a card at this price.

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We installed the card horizontally in the GR20. Installation and power connections were straightforward. We used the case’s included support to hold and secure the GPU, which was certainly worthwhile given its weight.

The specification lists 361 × 139.3 × 93.9 mm and a thickness of 4.7 slots [1]. Space was not an issue in our build, but these dimensions need checking before choosing another case.

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According to ASUS, cooling combines four fans, a vapour chamber and liquid metal. The manufacturer also advertises power delivery up to 800 W using its dual-input system and BTF-compatible GC-HPWR adapter [2]. This is a technical capability: we did not measure our sample’s power consumption.

The tests were carried out with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, a Crosshair X870E Edition 20 running BIOS 1002, 48 GB of DDR5 CUDIMM set to 8,000 MT/s and a 4 TB Samsung 9100 PRO. The CPU was cooled by the Ryujin 360 Edition 20 with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme thermal paste. Power was supplied by a ROG Thor 3000W Titanium III Edition 20, and the GR20 was positioned vertically with its cross-flow fan.

We used NVIDIA driver 616.92 and retained stock card settings: no extra overclocking, undervolting or power-limit changes. Usage lasted about a week across CS2, BF6 and benchmarks. We encountered no crashes, black screens or display corruption.

The fans stop at idle. Under load, the card remains extremely quiet to our ears. Its substantial cooler benefits here from an open case, with plenty of clearance around the card. We heard no coil whine on this sample.

These temperatures are averages over benchmark runs, not maxima, and apply to our open build. Ambient temperature for those GPU runs was not recorded, and we took no acoustic measurements in decibels. These results therefore do not rank it against other cooling systems.

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For Forza, we show the benchmark’s overall average FPS.

The rise from 75 to 231 FPS at 4K with ×4 frame generation shows the increase in displayed frames. It does not mean the game calculates frames three times faster or responds like native rendering at 231 FPS.

Beyond the numbers, our CS2 and BF6 experience was very good, with no felt difference from the Astral Black and White cards already tried. For us, this edition’s appeal lies in presentation and finish rather than a noticeable change in games.

In Black Myth: Wukong, the indicator labelled “5%” measured 160, 162 and 163 FPS across three runs, averaging 161.67 FPS. We retain its original label and do not present it as a 1% low.

At €6,600 from Absolute PC during our test, this Edition 20 remains extremely expensive. Astral Black prices we had seen ranged from €5,500 to €6,000, versus around €2,800–3,000 several months earlier. That is the context in which we assess its price.

Using Absolute PC’s price as the reference, the Edition 20 premium was €600–1,100. In a collector’s build, that extra may seem less striking than the card’s total price. It still does not make €6,600 reasonable for a graphics card.

At this rate, we may end up calling an almost €7,000 RTX 5090 Edition 20 “average-priced”. We would honestly prefer this joke not to age so well.