(Image credit: Nvidia)
With the introduction of Nvidia’s RTX 50-series (Blackwell) GPU lineup last night, the trillion-dollar GPU manufacturer has updated its SFF-Ready list of supported Nvidia GPUs to incorporate the new Blackwell GPUs. The updated list reveals that the RTX 5090 Founders Edition is the only RTX 5090 variant that qualified as an SFF-Ready product.
Nvidia’s SFF-Ready guidelines dictate that a 70-class Nvidia RTX 40 series (Ada Lovelace) or 50 series graphics card must not be taller than 151 mm, including the power cable bend radius, no longer than 304mm, and no thicker than 50mm or 2.5 PCIe slots. Nvidia’s brand-new RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card is well within those specifications, featuring a length of 137mm, a height of 304mm, and a thickness of 40mm or two PCIe slots.
This makes the RTX 5090 Founders Edition the first and only 90-class flagship Nvidia GPU to fit within Nvidia’s small form factor regulations. None of Nvidia’s previous-generation Ada Lovelace GPUs, including the RTX 4090, were compact enough to fit within Nvidia’s regulations, and, apparently, none of the RTX 5090-based AIB partner cards are small enough, either. For perspective, the RTX 5090 Founders Edition cooler is so small that it comes in at the same size (down to the millimeter) as the RTX 5080 Founders Edition, despite the RTX 5080 consuming almost half the power as the RTX 5090.
To achieve this, Nvidia has reworked its Founders Edition design compared to the 40-series to improve cooling performance while slimming down the cooler’s size compared to the RTX 4090 Founders Edition. Parts of the re-design include thermal metal, a more efficient double flow-through cooler design, and a three-piece PCB. This has enabled Nvidia to provide enough cooling performance to cool the RTX 5090 and its very power-hungry 575W TDP while maintaining a slim two-slot thickness. By contrast, the RTX 4090 Founders Edition consumed 450W but took up three PCIe slots in raw thickness, which knocked it out of Nvidia’s SFF-Ready qualifications.
The RTX 5090 is the only graphics card with this “problem.” Founders Edition (where applicable) and AIB-partner variants of the RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 can be found to be SFF-Ready.
The RTX 5090’s Founders Edition’s small size will inevitably make this GPU the go-to option for small form factor builds or anyone looking to build a high-performance system with a “normal-sized” graphics card. We are anticipating the RTX 50 series to launch by the end of this month.
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