[CES 2025] MSI Showcases Two New Special Edition RTX 5090 GPUs With Up To Five Fans

While many AIB vendors have announced their new RTX 50-based offerings this week, MSI has decided to cook up something quite different with two new cards that adopts unconventional cooling designs. The first one is a liquid-cooled model that involves two fans with integrated radiators, while the second one is takes the concept of air cooling to the extreme with 5 fans onboard.

MSI’s GPU Cooling Engineering Exercise

Officially, these two cards, based on the RTX 5090 GPU, don’t even carry a nameplate with them – they’re simply called “Special Edition”, though there are design hints resembling the Lightning Edition cards that represented MSI’s creme de la creme offerings many years ago (the marketing images also conspicuously features a lightning motif in the place of the letter ‘I’).

The first model is the dual-fan, dual-radiator model that looks seemingly tame on the outside, but it’s the inside that counts: internally, this AIO-based model features a pair of 120mm radiators to cool the GPU core and memory modules through various water channels, which seems like these card may be using the special center-mounted PCB found in the RTX 5090 Founders Edition to maximize the space for the cooling components.

As for the air-cooled model, it has a staggering five-fan setup – three intake in the front, two exhaust at the back – which is only possible if the card is mounted in the center. Exactly how good the cooling performance they will be compared to conventional triple-fan GPUs are still an unknown since MSI hasn’t provided much details, but I’d imagine these exotic designs are meant to contain all 575 watts of power this GPU can throw at them, all while keeping noise at a minimum.

Special variants aside, the company has also announced its RTX 50 series lineup will include six designs: SUPRIM LIQUID (RTX 5090 only), SUPRIM, VANGUARD, GAMING TRIO, GAMING VENTUS, and INSPIRE series.

Pokdepinion: These two cards are looking properly special by the looks of it.