CES award outs MSI's monstrous 1600W RTX 5090 Lightning GPU — new flagship has next generation liquid cooling, dual 16-pin power connectors, and a surface-mounted LCD display

MSI's Lightning brand of GPUs have represented the company's highest-tier offerings, but they've been on a hiatus these past few generations. Fortunately, the iconic line-up is being revived with a new RTX 5090 Lightning, overtaking the Suprim X as MSI's flagship 5090 variant. While the card hasn't been officially shown off yet, a new CES Innovation Awards listing has unveiled much of the specifics.

Before that, the company posted a teaser video on social media, confining the return of the Lightning brand and promising a proper announcement for tomorrow. We'll be sure to bring you exclusive coverage of MSI's RTX 5090 Lightning right from the show floor. Till then, a CES Innovation Awards page has already crowned this GPU as an honoree in "Gaming & eSports," along with unabashed praise for its extreme performance.

On the CES awards page, it mostly talks about the cards cooling prowess, "A next-generation pump optimizes flow dynamics, feeding MSI’s patented hybrid-density radiator with zoned fin spacing for superior heat exchange. A silent, high-pressure axial fan with newly designed aerodynamic blades further boosts static pressure at low noise." The main takeaway is the mention of a "reinforced high-power PCB and premium VRM." This refers to an insane 40 power phases, higher than even Galax HOF 5090D's 36/38-phase VRM, capable of delivering up to 1600W of power via dual 12V-2x6 connectors.

Those will probably go well with MSI's new power supply promising to prevent your 5090's 16-pin connector from melting, a situation only exacerbated by having two of them. Evidently, we saw this GPU break world records just yesterday. There will also be a dedicated mobile app to take advantage of the card's unique design.

That transitions us nicely into aesthetics. Prior leaks have already shown us what the GPU looks like — it's a liquid-cooled card with the tubes protruding from the right side, connected to a 360mm radiator. There's a massive screen on one side of the card, and the CES page notes that it can display real-time system visualizations and a companion app enables users to monitor and tweaking overclock settings on the go. The teaser MSI shared also features quick glances at the fans on that aforementioned rad. As you'd expect, the design language leans heavily into a gaming aesthetic, with sharp lines and tasteful RGB accents all around.

At the core (no pun intended), it's still an RTX 5090 so expect all the same specs, just turned up a notch due to the extra overclocking headroom. Reports of a monstrous 2500W XOC BIOS are also floating around, suggesting a new enthusiast champ in the industry. Unfortunately, that same industry is currently navigating a memory crisis, so the 32 GB of GDDR7 VRAM onboard might hike up the card's price even more.

That's not to say it was ever going to be cheap without it. Make no mistake — we're looking at $4,000+ here since this card competes with (and surpasses, in most aspects) the ROG Matrix Platinum RTX 5090, which did retail for $4,000, and that came out before the DRAM shortage took effect. Therefore, availability might become another concern, but seeing how this GPU will only be targeted at extreme overclockers, inventory probably won't be an issue.

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