As well as a see-through 720Hz tandem OLED gaming monitor, Asus unveiled a retro-looking graphics card that draws up to 800W – a massive 200W jump over the most powerful RTX 5090 models and 215W over the base spec. A single 16-pin power cable maxes out at 600W, so the ROG Matrix uses both the proprietary BTF connector built into Asus motherboards and the regular 16-pin power input. That should make this the most powerful consumer graphics card in the world by a huge margin, and just how it’s been designed is fascinating.
In short, Asus wanted to pay homage to their past designs with a 30th anniversary edition that goes well beyond the standard “take your standard GPU and paint it differently” method of creating special models. That accounts for the unusual circular frame of the far end, which refers back to a card Asus launched in 2008, but inside there are also manufacturing and design elements from later models: 3mm copper PCBs, vapour chamber cooling, liquid metal, four fans and so on.
Perhaps most critically for the super-wealthy slash overclocking audience the limited edition card is intended for, there are sensors on every wire of each power input to ensure that none is drawing too much power – after all, with 800W on tap, this is effectively uncharted territory for a “stock” graphics card.