In the hope of giving their RTX 5090 graphics card more overclocking headroom, a modder has managed to give it an extra 200W by flashing its BIOS. After swapping their card’s firmware for the BIOS found on Asus’ ROG Matrix RTX 5090 30th Anniversary Limited Edition card, and making some physical modifications to their Asus RTX 5090 Astral card, the 800W limit was unlocked, enabling higher overclocks.
Hardware enthusiasts have always tried to extract the maximum performance out of their hardware, and today’s Asus RTX 5090 Astral mod is no different. In this case, though, there would be a high price for failure, given the £2,799.99 cost of an Asus RTX 5090 Astral card, and that’s just at MSRP.
While the days of transforming a GTX 465 into a GTX 470 are long gone, flashing your card with a different BIOS – generally from premium models – can still net some decent gains. That’s exactly what HardwareLuxx forum user ‘turbogear’ managed to do with their Asus RTX 5090 Astral. They took the Asus ROG Matrix RTX 5090 30th Anniversary Limited Edition BIOS, which boasts an 800W power limit, and flashed it to the Astral version, which was limited to 600W.
However, for this BIOS to work, the card had to be physically modified by switching the location of a specific resistor. This isn’t surprising, since the Matrix utilises an enhanced version of the Astral’s PCB. Apparently, the black version of the Astral has a different fan wiring, requiring this modification for the card to work with the Matrix BIOS.
The result is an RTX 5090 with 200W more power at its disposal, and thus higher potential for overclocking. What’s more, since the Matrix came with a 2,760MHz boost clock out-of-the-box, the modded Astral is now boosting 14.6% higher than its 2,407MHz original boost clock. To put it simply, the Asus RTX 5090 Astral has been transformed into the limited-edition Matrix.
Unsurprisingly, this means a higher heat output, for which the Astral may not be equipped. Because of this, anyone attempting this modification is recommended to use a liquid-cooled setup.
Needless to say, such a mod isn’t for beginners, let alone regular users. I, for one, would think twice before attempting such a mod on a card at this price.
