Blink and you’ll miss it. Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition and its RTX 5080 sibling are finally available to buy in the UK, marking the first proper restock since launch. As far as I can tell, it’s the only model available at its lower £1,889 MSRP, and the smallest of the lot with a clean, compact, two-slot cooler we can’t rate highly enough.
You’ll find Founders Edition exclusively through Nvidia’s site, fulfilled by Scan. No queues, no lotteries, and no inflated prices. It’s been slim pickings since the card was unveiled, with UK stock drying up almost instantly. Although third-party variants from MSI, Gigabyte, and Palit have slowly stabilised over the past few months in terms of availability, Founders Edition has been MIA worldwide. Nvidia funnelled most shipments towards US-based waiting lists, but there was no such luck in Blighty. That makes today’s restock something of a milestone for British buyers, especially if you missed out at launch.
Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 Series FE
Nvidia looks to the future rather than peer over its shoulder, as RTX 5090 remains the pinnacle of gaming in 2025. Read our review.
What sets Founders Edition apart is how refined it feels. Most RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 graphics cards are massive beasts designed with triple fan coolers better suited to win size contests rather than fit inside a standard chassis. Nvidia’s own model is refreshingly restrained, sticking to a streamlined two-slot form factor without sacrificing cooling or acoustics. There’s a lot of wizardry under the hood, but the top-level is that it’s a mixture of liquid metal and its dual-blowthrough configuration.
Performance, as expected, is absurdly good, offering a 78% boost over RTX 4090 at 4K resolution without using its DLSS 4 secret sauce. Chuck in Multi-Frame Generation, which can more than double anything the previous flagship, and nothing quite compares. But it’s the elegance of the cooler and the overall design that keeps us coming back. Our review praised its smart layout, premium build, and whisper-quiet fan curve. It remains one of the only 5090s you can fit in a compact case or a clean minimalist build. No water loop required.
If you’ve been holding out, now’s the time to act. There’s no telling how long stock will last, and it could be months before we see it return. With pricing set at Nvidia’s own recommended rate, this is as good as it gets for a flagship GPU that rarely shows its face.
