Like any reasonable person, I found myself thinking, you know, the GeForce
RTX 5090 is just too darn affordable.
Won't somebody please find a way to make it more expensive without adding any
performance? Praise be. Asus has
answered my call. The ROG Astral 5090
Dah Hab Edition is exactly what it says
on the tin, a top-of-the-line RTX 5090
GPU, which is already going to run you3 to $4,000 after scalper markup, but with
6 12 g of N99 finness gold and Arab
inspired motifs embedded on its giant four fan cooler. Well, you might say
maybe it's not that ridiculous. I mean, gold seems like a perfectly chromulent
investment in these turbulent times. How much more could it cost, Michael?
$10. Oh, no. My friends, for the approximately
$675 worth of gold on this thing, you will pay, or rather I should say I have
paid anywhere from about $4 to
$5,000 more for this hyper exclusive
piece of gaming bling. This thing better knock my socks off.
After a word from the sucker who helped me pay for it. Private Internet Access.
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The aptly named 590 DAB or gold edition
is exclusive to the Middle Eastern North Africa region and is meant to pay homage
to the growing ROG customer base there. So, how did I get my hands on it? I'm in
Canada. Well, okay, normally I am, but today I'm in Taiwan. And after sending a
message to my incredulous ASUS contact saying that I wanted to buy one, they
put me in touch with a contact who hand carried this from Saudi Arabia to the
show floor for me to purchase. The only question was, how do I get it safely off
the show floor to unbox it? The retail
prices we've seen for this monster are anywhere from $7,000 to
$10,000. I paid about 8,000 for mine,
which feels completely unhinged. Like,
surely this card is just some kind of bizarre publicity stunt, right? Well,
shockingly, it's not. While ASUS has
never publicly stated how many of these limited edition cards were made, they
told me that it is apparently 500, which turns this science fair project into $4
million of potential revenue. That is a
lot more than I expected. My guess in the first draft of the script before I
heard back from ASUS was anywhere from 5 to 50. But I don't know, maybe I
shouldn't be that surprised. It's not like this is that new. ASUS has done
extreme limited run GPUs in the past. The Mars 2, for instance, was a dual GPU
overclocked card that had no power limit, and they did about a thousand of
those at $1,500 over 10 years ago. you know,
before regular GPUs were $1,500. And the Middle Eastern market,
where this GPU is apparently selling quite well, is much bigger than it used
to be. Surely, they can find 500 rich
gamers then to shell out for one, or 499
since I've got one of them. Let's take a look. Got to give ASUS credit. They know
how to present. Ah, yes.
Thank you. How about thank you very much for
this one. All right. How to
install I dropped the one thing that
mattered. Certificate of
authenticity. Oo. What is it? It's a fridge
magnet. I don't know what I was expecting.
But fridge magnet, wasn't it? Quad PCIe to 12vt 2x6 adapter. A
gold themed GPU support. Oh, whoa. Oh. Oh. Oh, it's
magnetic. And it's got a little screwdriver on the end. Finally, a thick
boy cable tie and one of those adorable little PCB rulers. Gold themed, of
course. At this point, this probably feels like five play, though. Let's
hurry up and Oh. Oh
my. Oh, it
stinks. What the heck? James, come here.
Oh. Whoa. See, got that good
manufacturing stank.
Holy. Everything is gold.
The attention to detail is like I don't
think I've ever seen from these guys before. Even the IO plate is painted
gold. There are a few details that ASUS points out in their product story for
this card that I have to confess now that I have it in my hands I'm finding a
little bit confusing. Uh first of all, they say that they chose the color gold
to symbolize its rarity. It's limited edition and also because it's the color
of sand which is um where the Middle East
started in the desert and then so that's the idea behind this
etched graphic that they have on the back where you've got Buddy with his
camels and then something and then giant
skyscrapers to show the progress in the region from the desert to the sky. The
fan hubs are apparently covered in ancient Arabic
characters. And apparently there's handwritten Arabic calligraphy somewhere
that says unity, courage, and strength. But I'm not sure where it is. I don't
read Arabic. One little detail they don't
point out in the product story is that there's coordinates on here. Hey, James,
it's the ASUS building in Taipei.
As for why ASUS chose their Astral design for the Dehab Edition, well, I
think that's pretty obvious. It has their sick new vapor chamber that has
those recesses for heat pipes. It's got their dual fan blowthrough design on the
back here. Total of four fans, enhanced power delivery that made it Splaves card
of choice for extreme overclocking. And of course, it looks sick. All I need to
do now is build a PC that is worthy of my new GPU. But wait a sec. It looks
cool, but we don't actually know if it works. And I should probably find a test
bench before I leave the country with it. I have no idea what my warranty
coverage is going to look like for some card that I obtained in Asia, but was
intended for sale in the Middle East and I'm taking to North America. Where am I
going to get a computer? Where better to find a system than the GKL booth? Hey, I
need a hookup way. You need AC? Uh,
actually, that's very nice, but no, not that. Okay. I have a GPU. I think I know
where this is going. Can you get me a test bench where I can stress test it?
Of course. Okay. Where What do you want to put it on? Uh, I guess. Hey, where
are you going with that? Where are you going with that? I'm going to steal it. Of course. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
Do Yeah. Why not that one? You want to use on cam? Why not? All right. I mean,
this clearly needs an upgrade. Yeah, of course. Of course. I don't ask for much,
right? This is sick. DR5 cam 2. Nice.
Nice. We found a new power supply from our friends over at Careful. Don't
worry, it's fine. It's all good. This is their Prime 1300 watt.
Here we go, boys.
Wait. Yes. Wait. This is all wrong. Why?
Well, I don't have any crystal golden memory on there. Oh, right. Yes. I love
bugging these guys, but I got to admit,
it kind of gets me thinking, what kind of PC do you put a GPU like this in?
Like, look, it looks completely out of place in here.
Hey, there it is. There you go. That's more like it. Trident Z5 Royal Neo. Get
this Get this non- gold stuff out of here. Disgusting. Okay, there we go.
I'll put it I'm going to put it there. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I never mentioned the
IO. It has five ports. Two HDMI, three DisplayPort. Neat. Hey, it
works. So far, realistically, GSkill's
favorite game is make RAM number go up really high. So, I didn't expect them to
have any actual game files, but what they do have is Firmark. So, we can go
ahead and uh make sure this bad boy works. Hey,
fans are spinning. 100% usage. Power 600 watts. I
mean, can't be 600 watts exactly, can it? They got to have hardware info on
here. Oh, yeah, they do. According to ADA 64, we are at
598.67 watts, 52.91
amps. Doesn't smell like burning. Definitely feels like 600 watts. So, it
works. Which means the only question now is what do I do with it? I could do an
all gold PC. Maybe I could scalp it.
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If you guys enjoyed this video, why don't we throw back to that time I unboxed the Mars 2, one of their
previous weirdo limited edition GPUs.