Should you buy a 2007 Honda Accord with 111,000 miles on the odometer and leather upholstery that still looks pretty good, or should you buy a new graphics card? Such is the question I posed to myself after I saw the new Asus ROG Matrix RTX 4090 (and after doing a quick search on my local Craigslist). This no-holds-barred, liquid metal cooled, $4,000 GPU was revealed at Computex. We took a trip to Asus to get an interview from one of its creators, and you can watch it below.
The incredibly customized RTX 4090 has a custom metal frame with an inner and outer chamber, permanently attached to a 360mm triple-fan cooler in all-in-one fashion. It looks like nothing else on the market, and performs like it too: The boost goes up to 2.7GHz, the biggest jump over stock on the market by far. According to Asus, it’s set multiple overclocking records.
Asus Senior Product Manager Howard Hsu told Adam all about the development of that custom liquid metal system, why they chose the 360mm cooler in particular, and how well it will perform in a high-end build. This isn’t the first product Asus has used the notoriously fickle cooling solution for, but it’s certainly the most powerful, commanding 660 watts directly from the power supply.
Though Asus wasn’t ready to announce the price at the time this video was recorded, we now know that the ROG Matrix 4090 will cost $3,200, approximately double the price of the stock card (and coincidentally, more expensive than every piece in my current PC, plus the four-column standing desk it’s mounted to). For more looks at the latest and greatest PC components, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.