I’m suddenly really excited about Nvidia’s new RTX 5090 – but probably not for the reason you’re expecting
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Two-slot is back, baby!. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. This week’s Nvidia RTX 5000 reveal at CES 2025 in Las Vegas was a pretty mixed bag for me. On the one hand, the generational price drop on the new RTX 5070 was an extremely welcome sight, as was the backward compatibility for DLSS 4 across all RTX cards. On the other hand, the RTX 5090 costs 2,000 bucks, and Nvidia’s new Multi Frame Generation tech – while impressive – will be exclusive to next-gen GPUs.
![[A set of Nvidia RTX graphics cards next to a compact PC case.]](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vsc9ekFwAT79FftdgtomsL-320-80.jpg)
Still, there was one footnote to Nvidia’s slate of CES reveals that really piqued my interest: a renewed commitment to its SFF-Ready scheme. This program has actually been floating around for a while - it was a small part of the Nvidia press presentation I attended at Computex last year - but I hadn’t really paid it much heed up till this point.
![[An Nvidia RTX 4090]](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/PgUqWZHAyA9SANyQPQAaaK-320-80.jpg)
Why? Well, as much as I love compact PCs, Nvidia’s SFF (Small Form Factor) program felt a bit half-assed at the time. The scheme determined key specifications for other industry bodies – primarily third-party GPU makers and case manufacturers – to follow, creating a sort of certification that assures users that their chosen graphics card will fit inside whatever compact case they buy.
![[Christian Guyton]](https://vanilla.futurecdn.net/cyclingnews/media/img/missing-image.svg)
It was a good idea in theory, but there wasn’t much an experienced PC-builder couldn’t reasonably extrapolate – most of the current-gen cards supported were twin-fan RTX 4070 and 4070 Ti models, with a small handful of third-party 4080 cards. The only supported first-party FE (Founders Edition) cards from Nvidia were the 4070 and 4070 Super – if you ever saw an RTX 4090 FE in person, you’d understand perfectly that there was zero chance that ultra-chunky GPU would fit inside an SFF case.
