Between development and the final product, we have designs that evolve greatly. If what is shown on the ChipHell forum is true, then the RTX 5090 and RTX 4090 engineering samples were radically different from the final products. Indeed, whether for the Ada Lovelace or Blackwell series, the cards would have benefited from an oversized power supply based on four 12VHPWRs!
Four 12VHPWRs for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 engineering samples!
As you can see, the PCB is radically different from the production PCB for NVIDIA’s RTX 4090 Founders Edition. In fact, as seen above the development model benefits from a full-length PCB. What’s more, the memory chips are further away from the GPU, which is absent here. Another instinctive element is the large number of touch points and buttons. Their purpose is clear: to carry out the various tests that could be carried out on the card.
However, what really catches our attention here is the massive number of 12VHPWR connectors. As you can see, the RTX 4090 test model has four connectors. While the PCB of the RTX 5090 is not visible, this would also appear to be the case for this card. This is a significant difference compared to production boards, which only have a single power connector.
Obviously, NVIDIA uses a very large proportion of the power supply for the development of its GPUs. Throughout their development and as production matures, we assume that power consumption will be reduced. What’s more, in order to test frequencies, fine-tune bios, etc., having a large power supply helps to cope with the ups and downs of development.