Look, I know rich people aren’t uniformly stupid, but there definitely seems to be a subset of luxury goods that assume such. (Luxury fashion made to look like thrift store goods comes to mind.) And Asus apparently wants a piece of that blue-blood pie because it’s making an RTX 5090 graphics card covered in friggin’ gold.
The Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab OC Edition is exclusive to the Middle East, and boy, does it want you to know it. The custom all-gold cooler is covered in Arabic calligraphy and imagery, complete with camels and opulent skyscrapers. If there’s a tasteless joke about this card being reserved for Saudi princes, then Asus isn’t afraid to embrace it.
The card is “a celebration of the rapid evolution of the Middle East, featuring a unique skyline silhouette that signifies a transition from the sands to the skies.” The promotional site, spotted by Tom’s Hardware, is leaning hard into the same stereotypes.
Asus
In terms of actual technology, the Dhahab OC Edition seems basically identical to the already-spendy ROG Astral RTX 5090 model, with a “die-cast frame and metal GPU bracket” that holds triple fans on the front and one on the back. Unlike the rather svelte two-slot RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition from Nvidia, this one’s massive at 76mm thick and 357.6 mm long. The Astral Edition commands $2,800, which is $800 over the MSRP of the base model, with only a 0.2GHz boost over the stock model to show for it in overclocked mode.
Is the Dhabab card covered in actual gold? Doubtful. I think Asus would have put that on the promo page if it were the case. How much does it cost? I’ve seen no hard numbers, but it hardly seems like it matters — you can’t get your hands on an RTX 5090 right now anyway. I’m just going to assume you get one for free if you reserve an apartment in Neom.