I’m suddenly very excited about Nvidia’s new RTX 5090 – but probably not for the reason you expect
This week’s unveiling of the Nvidia RTX 5000 at CES 2025 in Las Vegas was quite a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, the generational price drop of the new RTX 5070 was an extremely welcome sight, as was the backwards compatibility for DLSS 4 on all RTX cards. On the other hand, the RTX 5090 will cost $2,000, and Nvidia’s new Multi Frame Generation technology – while impressive – will be exclusive to the next generation of GPUs.
Still, there was one footnote to Nvidia’s series of CES reveals that really piqued my interest: a renewed commitment to its SFF-Ready program. This program has been floating around for a while – it was a small part of the Nvidia press presentation I attended at Computex last year – but I hadn’t really paid much attention to it until now.
Why? As much as I love compact PCs, Nvidia’s SFF (Small Form Factor) program felt a bit half-hearted at the time. The scheme established key specifications that other industry bodies – mainly third-party GPU makers and case manufacturers – had to follow, creating a kind of certification that assures users that their chosen graphics card will fit in whatever compact case they buy.
It was a good idea in theory, but there wasn’t much that an experienced PC builder couldn’t reasonably extrapolate – most of the current generation’s supported cards were dual-fan RTX 4070 and 4070 Ti models, with a small handful of thirds -lot of 4080 cards. The only supported first-party FE (Founders Edition) cards from Nvidia were the 4070 and 4070 Super – if you ever saw an RTX 4090 FE in real life, you would perfectly understand that there was no chance of an ultra-thick GPU inside would fit an SFF case.
But with the RTX 5000 series, that’s all about to change.
Small is the new big
Yes, the RTX 5090 FE is much smaller than its predecessor – despite being an absolute monster of a GPU in terms of performance (and price), the Founders Edition of Team Green’s new flagship graphics card returns to a dual-slot configuration and measures 137 x 304 x 40mm – just small enough to fit within Nvidia’s SFF-Ready size limits.
The list of viable third-party cards is also longer and more comprehensive than the one for the RTX 4000 generation (you can view the list at Nvidia website), with almost every third-party manufacturer offering at least one RTX 5080 variant that fits into a compact PC case. It seems like the only 5090 eligible is the FE version, but that’s still a significant improvement considering even the RTX 4080 FE was too big.
As console performance improves with the likes of the PS5 Pro and the inexorable march of PC gaming handhelds continues, there’s a rising demand for ‘living room PCs’ – the kind of compact system that fits comfortably in your TV stand and can be used for gaming. used with a traditional gamepad. The renewed inclusivity of the SFF-Ready program is a step in the right direction here.
While I may still be a little dubious about the price tag (sorry Nvidia, $2,000 is practically pro-grade hardware territory), there’s no denying that the RTX 5090 would be an absolute beast of a living room gaming machine. Even the RTX 5070 should outperform any currently available console using DLSS 4. Okay, the article is over, I have to get on the phone with Nvidia right now.