With Graphics Processing Units (aka ‘video cards’ or ‘GPU’ for short) consuming more and more…and more power with every new generation, it should come as no surprise that video card manufacturers have flirted with the idea of “alternative cooling solutions”. After all, no one wants to use up the entirety of their motherboard’s PCIe slot zone just for the video card. No one wants to deal with bowing/flexing… heck installation headaches that go along with 4 slot cards. No one wants to deal with the fact that even ‘4 slot’ 3 Kilogram plus cards have a hard time keeping up with 600 watts of waste heat… and let’s not even think about the hassle factor of dealing with 600 watts of heat inside the case and its impact on the CPU. As such All In One, sealed looped, water solutions seemed like the answer. Sadly, previous AIO-based video cards proved to have their own problems and overall were less than ideal alternatives to ‘tried and true’ air-based options. This is where MSI’s RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC enters the chat as it is not like previous AIO-based GPUs.
Put bluntly. Previous tries at an AIO-based video card failed for one simple reason: they did not provide tangibly better results than their air-based brethren. Sure they were typically 2’ish slot cards, but one still had to find room in the case for a 2×120 radiator. Usually along with finding room for the CPU AIO’s rad as well. Conversely, with only 240 radiator’s worth of cooling many AIO-based GPUs simply failed to perform as well as the best of the best air-based models. Models typically were in the same ballpark, price-wise, as the AIO option. Thus a different but still difficult hassle factor combined with little to no price to performance improvements doomed them all to uber-niche status.
The MSI RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC is different. It is different because MSI finally saw the light and gave up on trying to make a ‘small’ radiator-based solution work with a GPU that pumps out as much waste heat as modern-day GPU cards do. Thus, they defenestrated the mediocre rad out the nearest airlock and replaced it with a big boi 3×120 radiator. Mix in nice ‘n’ long tubing that gives freedom of bottom or front mounting options and this ‘one simple trick’ may just kick off as big a revolution in the GPU space as it did in the CPU space.
Before getting too hyped up, or getting the wrong impression. Yes. We are truly excited by this change in direction on MSI’s part. However… make no mistake. One is paying for the privilege of all this innovation. To be precise there are two main issues experienced system builders are going to have when they first hear about what MSI has wrought. Those being, installation and asking price. On the surface, an asking price of ~3600 CAD ($2500 USD) is over $600 CAD (5 bills US) more than the Founder’s Edition. However, that is not exactly a fair comparison. It is rather reasonable when compared against other “3rd party” models. For instance, ASUS has air-based cards that cost even more than the Suprim Liquid SOC!
Thus, for most the real crux of the issue will boil down to how much performance it has to offer and if it is enough to overcome the… different installation issues that always are associated with AIO-based video cards. After all with a 3×120 radiator to contend with the Suprim Liquid will simply not fit inside every (normal-sized) case, whereas a 4-slot air-based model probably will inside (a normal-sized case). So while it does not act like a fat man at a buffet when it comes to hogging all the free PCIe slots it does have its installation issues. As such can this bigger and better version of MSI’s Suprim Liquid model do what its predecessors could not and offer overall performance that is worth the water cooling effort? Let’s find out… as the results did indeed surprise us.
