I’m all for special edition graphics cards, but this ROG Astral RTX 5090 might be a bit too much. It’s no secret that Nvidia’s latest GPU has been hard to find in stock, and it has been increasing in price as a result. However, paying up to $10,600 to secure a new graphics card, just because it features real gold, isn’t a route most gamers will be open to traveling when trying to secure a new graphics card.
In our GeForce RTX 5090 review, we found that, while it’s overpriced, this new Nvidia behemoth is the best graphics card your money can buy if you want the very fastest performance. Even so, this graphics card certainly isn’t worth in excess of $10,000, even if Asus has gone to great lengths to add value through real gold, a move that has, ironically, made the final product look quite cheap.
The Asus ROG Astral Dhahab Edition, as it’s known, is only available in the Middle East, and it’s not expected to be released globally. Depending on where you’re located, the cost of the card changes due to currency conversion, but in the United Arab Emirates, you’ll pay 38,800 AED, which is currently around $10,600.
If you’re asking whether the inflated cost of the card is entirely down to the use of gold or whether there’s something else special going on, prepare to be disappointed. Dhahab is literally Arabic for gold, and Asus claims it’s using 6.5g of 999-fineness gold (meaning the purity is 999 parts gold per thousand, making it 24-carat) has been used on the card; there is nothing else here to justify the value. The total cost of the gold used in the card totals around $676 based on current prices.
As frustrating as the stock limitations have been, the market appears to be leveling out somewhat, at least in some places. It’s now possible to find and buy many of the latest generation of graphics cards, and although you may still be paying above the MSRP in the US, some prices are definitely dropping. UK gamers have had a little more luck as GPUs have been purchasable at MSRP for a few weeks.
For a closer look at some of the other recent GPU releases, read our RTX 5080 review, as well as our RX 9070 XT review, to see which one you should be buying for your gaming PC.
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