ASUS is not behind when it comes to implementing silent increments in its custom edition RTX 50 series and RX 9070 series cards, as can be seen on the website.
ASUS Increases RTX 5090 Astral OC MSRP by $280, RX 9070 Series Gets Expensive as Well
It’s not a secret anymore, and we are witnessing AIBs and retailers increasing the prices of the latest-gen GPUs on a daily basis. From the GeForce RTX 50 series to the Radeon RX 9070 series, most GPUs are getting price hikes in various parts of the world, and it’s not because of scalpers anymore. The current state of the GPU market is at a point where the announced MSRPs hold little to no weight.
Yesterday, we reported that vendors are increasing the prices of their cards as, apparently, most of the cost goes into the GPU and VRAM while they profit little from the coolers and packaging. However, even after initially increasing the cost, major vendors have kept on increasing the cost to the point where the GPUs now sit at almost 1.5X-2.0X their MSPRs. The latest case is ASUS, which has, once again, hiked its RTX 50 and RX 9070 series GPU prices significantly.
Last month, the company was asking up to $3409 for the flagship model, and while it was still at the initial phase when availability was almost zero, the company has kept this price tag identical to this date despite NVIDIA claiming to have shipped twice the cards compared to the RTX 40 series. Now, even if this doesn’t look too bad, wait until you see the updated price tag of the ASUS GeForce RTX 5090 Astral OC (the non-AIO one).
In the first week of Feb, it was listed at $3,079.99 on ASUS’s official website, and now it sits at $3,359.99, which is a solid $280 price hike in a month and roughly 1.68X higher than the MSRP. ‘Thankfully’, the TUF RTX 5090 OC edition increased by just $10 but its OC edition retails at $2999, roughly 1.5X the MSRP.
We saw a similar case with the Radeon RX 9070 series, and ASUS is charging at least $719 for the Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC model. If you want a slightly better one, then ASUS is asking for $799 for the TUF RX 9070 XT OC. For reference, the card launched for $599, and considering the Prime model is the cheapest you can expect from the company, this doesn’t look good at all.
Even the cheaper Radeon RX 9070 starts at $659, which is already higher than the base MSRP of RX 9070 XT and roughly $110 higher than the RX 9070’s MSRP.
News Sources: Videocardz, ASUS RTX 5090, ASUS RX 9070
