Shunted NVIDIA RTX 5090 breaks into the 3DMark top ten with air cooling only

Shunt resistors allow you to supply more power to your video card and overclock it better. This time outstanding result achieved only with air coolers.

Reddit user with the nickname thavidreadertrue used 1mΩ resistors to increase the TDP of the RTX 5090 to 1200W. This technology allowed the video card to reach the 9th place in the 3DMark Speedway top and get into the top 20 in Steel Nomad and Port Royal with AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor and air coolers on both (although usually such modifications require liquid cooling).

Overclocker didn’t change the heatsink on his Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5090 Aorus Master ICE graphics card as he found it sufficient for the thermal requirements. He replaced the existing 2 mOhm resistors with 1 mOhm, which doubled the power limit for the RTX 5090. By default, the GPU can consume about 600 watts.

The enthusiast also replaced the thermal interface of the video card using PTM 7950 thermal paste and Upsiren UX Ultra. With a power consumption of about 820 W at maximum load, a clock speed of 3.2 GHz, and a temperature of about 79 °C, the RTX 5090 managed to get into the top ten in 3DMark Speedway (with this processor and graphics card configuration) when it scored 16,559 points (9th place). It also took 11th place in Steel Nomad with 17,125 points and 15th place with 43,378 points in Port Royal.

This is the only air-cooled RTX 5090 that has achieved such a high score. Also, thanks to the replacement of resistors, the video card reached a clock frequency of 3.2 GHz with a voltage of 1,060 volts. For comparison, the card’s boost frequency is only 2.4 GHz.

Source: Wccftech