MSI RTX 5090 Lightning Z: Costs 5K, Pulls Over 1000W

1. Introduction2. Meet the MSI RTX 5090 Lightning Z3. Testing Methodology4. Game Benchmarks5. Clock Speed6. GPU Temperatures7. Acoustics8. Noise-Normalised Temperatures9. Power Draw and Efficiency10. Overclocking11. Closing Thoughts12. View All Pages

All in all, there's no disputing the fact that MSI’s RTX 5090 Lightning Z is an extreme card in every way. It's extreme in terms of pricing, extreme in terms of its performance and cooling capabilities, and extremely bonkers considering it has a massive user-configurable LCD screen built-in to the shroud!

From a pure performance perspective, it does exactly what you'd expect. It’s some 7-12% faster than Nvidia's Founders Edition, and it runs nice and cool, especially when noise-normalised. It's also good to see the dual 12V-2×6 implementation has been handled properly, with our testing showing even loading and nothing out of spec.

From a bang-for-buck perspective, however, it obviously makes zero sense over any other RTX 5090, considering the performance gains – while tangible – aren’t huge, and it costs almost twice as much as some air-cooled 5090 models.

Of course, that line of thinking misses the point entirely though, as the Lightning Z was never designed to deliver good value or anything close to it. It’s really just designed to appeal to those who want the bragging rights for having such a fast and expensive card, while the fact there’s only 1300 units worldwide only amplifies that. In a nutshell, it's a halo product aimed at the filthy rich or extreme overclockers.

Because of that, there’s ultimately no point in me saying whether I think you should buy it or not, as even by KitGuru’s enthusiast audience standards, I can’t see more than 0.01% of people being able to buy one, considering it costs an eye-watering £5000, and we were told to expect just 30 units coming to the UK.

From a technical and engineering perspective, though, it is clearly incredible, and I do think it's important to see companies still trying to push boundaries and push the envelope, even when the PC landscape is looking more challenging than ever. So fair play to MSI for that – basically no one will be able to buy a Lightning Z, but that doesn't mean it isn't an awesome graphics card.

MSI sent us the following retail links: Scan HERE and OCUK HERE.

KitGuru says: It's an insane feat of engineering on multiple levels.

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