Asus just made an RTX 5090 with 11 lbs of real gold worth $500,000 — RTX 5090 ROG Astral Gold Edition is the most expensive GPU of all time

News
By published

Finally, an RTX 5090 I can afford.

Asus RTX 5090 ROG Astral Real Gold Edition
(Image credit: @realVictor_M on X)

If you thought the RTX 5090, one of the best graphics cards, was too cheap and too readily available for the average consumer, then your alternate-dimension wishes have been finally granted. As spotted by X user 孤城Hardware, Asus, who already make some of the most extravagant GPUs on the market, has just shown off an RTX 5090 covered from head to toe in pure gold—a whole 11 lbs (5 kg)of it. The opulent graphics card is officially called the RTX 5090 ROG Astral Real Gold Edition, and it was on display at Bilibili World 2025, now considered the most expensive GPU ever made at $500,000.

For some context, the suggested retail pricing of a standard RTX 5090 is supposed to be $2,000, but it's hard to find them under $3,000, even six months after launch. Arguably Nvidia's premier AIB partner, Asus, makes three variants of the 5090: TUF Gaming, Astral, and Astral LC (liquid-cooled), and today's golden card is based on the quad-fan, air-cooled version of the Astral, which currently goes for around $3500 on Amazon. You don't need to be a mathematician to work out how insane the jump from $3,500 to $500,000 is, but that's what you get when you combine an overpriced GPU with an ultra-valuable commodity to form some type of uber-capitalist apparatus.

The gold RTX 5090 weighs a whopping 15.9 lbs (7.2 kg), 11 of which is gold. We can see that everything aside from the fans seems to be made of gold, including the heatsink. To refresh your memory, 2.2 lbs (1 kg) of gold costs roughly $100,000, so the theoretical price for this comes out to half a million dollars, but that doesn't include the base GPU itself. Maybe Asus will feel generous and throw that in as a gift alongside your gold bar; a real one weighs 27.3 lbs (12.4 kg), so this RTX 5090 gets quite close, and it happens to run games as a bonus.

The RTX 5090 ROG Astral Real Gold Edition follows Asus' previous stint at incorporating gold in their GPUs with the RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition, which "only" had 0.01 lbs (6.5 g) of gold and cost a measly $10,000. However, that was a real GPU that Asus might sell, compared to this pure gold card, which we can only hope is up for looks. Not to mention, the Dhahab just straight-up looked a lot better with its blue gemstone accents and tastefully gilded patterns around the shroud. Half a million dollars gets you an RTX 5090 that looks like it was hydro-dipped in gold by some YouTuber in their backyard, but I guess money doesn't buy taste.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.

See more GPUs News
Hassam Nasir
Hassam Nasir
Contributing Writer

Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Hooda Thunkett
    Are you sure that's gold? In the picture it looks like...yellow plastic.
    Reply
  • coromonadalix
    all the bling and still get the burning connectors lolll lmfao
    Reply
  • 93QSD5
    Hooda Thunkett said:
    Are you sure that's gold? In the picture it looks like...yellow plastic.
    Never question Toms Hardware's desire for clickbait.
    Gone are the days of journalistic integrity, the cash rules now.
    Reply
  • fiyz
    93QSD5 said:
    Never question Toms Hardware's desire for clickbait.
    Gone are the days of journalistic integrity, the cash rules now.
    All hail the green king!
    Reply
  • DingusDog
    Ouch my PCIe slot
    Reply
  • Minus_i7
    Not a very flattering picture of something that's supposed to be bling, that's for sure.

    Just guessing that most of the gold is actually in the radiator, which would at least make a tiny amount of sense, since gold conducts heat better than aluminum does.
    Reply
  • JMarvelous
    Geeze, 500k for a stupid GPU yet I bet the workers are over worked and underpaid! CAPITALISM! What an insane waste of money.
    Reply
  • jnoe
    Pretty sure that's a 3D printed yellow cover lol
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Minus_i7 said:
    Not a very flattering picture of something that's supposed to be bling, that's for sure.
    Agreed.

    Minus_i7 said:
    Just guessing that most of the gold is actually in the radiator, which would at least make a tiny amount of sense, since gold conducts heat better than aluminum does.
    No, if they actually cared about performance they'd just use copper. That's more heat-conductive than gold.

    Plus, when you have such an expensive material that's incorporated basically just for show, it'd be stupid to put it anywhere that's not visible. If there were a good argument to make the radiator fins out of gold, then they'd probably make the shroud out of crystal, so that you could actually see the golden radiator.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    JMarvelous said:
    Geeze, 500k for a stupid GPU yet I bet the workers are over worked and underpaid!
    Oh, that's not the half of it. A lot of gold is mined by people with terrible working conditions and in ways that are causing serious environmental problems like mercury pollution, downstream of them.

    Some of these gold miners are even being coerced by criminal and armed militant groups and the resulting gold is used to help fund organized crime and military conflicts. IMO, it's not ethical to buy or use gold where it's not needed (e.g. for corrosion resistance), in light of all the problems being caused by its extraction.
    Reply