MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X 24G, 24GB GDDR6X, HDMI, 3x DP

Wie schlagen sich die neuen CPUs Ryzen 5 9600X und Ryzen 7 9700X im Gaming auf einer Grafikkarte vom Typ Radeon RX 7900 XTX im Vergleich zur GeForce RTX 4090? Wie reagieren die CPUs auf schnelleren Speicher bis hinauf zu DDR5-8000 in Spielen? Der Test liefert die Antworten.

Die GeForce RTX 4090 ist gelauncht, mit dem 12VHPWR-Anschluss muss man schauen, wie sich das so weiterentwickelt und genau deshalb machen wir heute mal den Schwenk zu den angenehmen Seiten des Lebens. Immer nur Stecker wäre ja langweilig. Und wer gerade so richtig flüssig ist, könnte sich ja auch die MSI GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM LIQUID X leisten, die ihrerseits ja flüssig gekühlt wird. Die Karte nutzt eine Hybrid-Kühlung in Form einer All-in-One Kompaktwasserkühlung und einen Luftikus für das schlanke Hinterteil der Platine. Kann man so machen. Wie gut das dann performt, sehen wir gleich noch. Ich teste übrigens alle Spiele im Gaming-Modus und habe auf den Silent-Mode bewusst verzichtet. Ich glaube auch nicht, dass jemand so viel Geld für diese Karte ausgibt, nur um sie dann künstlich zu begrenzen.

Wrapping things up, Nvidia hit a home run with performance. From the raw raster improvements to DLSS 3.0, FPS hasn’t been higher, and graphics cards incredibly capable. However, that comes at a price. On the front end, an RTX 4090 costs you around $1499 dollars for an FE version, more for custom high-end models like the Suprim, Strix, and Aorus from card partners. The other side where it can bite you is with power consumption and heat. With power use reaching 450W (and more) the cards get thicker, or you need a liquid-cooled solution like the Suprim Liquid X we have from MSI. The card we have takes the monster Nvidia created and takes it to a whole different level. With a 240mm radiator to control the room heater, temperatures are well under control, and it does so while being relatively quiet. To get the most out of these cards and get all of the boost bins you can, watercooling is the way to go. If this card is left to sit in the 80s as the 3090 Ti’s did (at least, the Suprim X I have), you’ll lose a few bins to keep the temperature at the default limit. The most painful part to swallow is the price. People, it doesn’t seem like they are coming down anytime soon. At almost $1600, it’s ‘only’ $100 more than the RTX 3090. From a performance per dollar perspective, it’s a lot better, but tell that to our bank account that doesn’t count frames, just dollars. On top of the expense, it’s not easy to mitigate 450W worth of heat, but the Suprim Liquid X’s AIO does a great job of it. In order to run this card, you’ll need a beefy power supply with four PCIe 6+2 connectors and a minimum of 850W. Most (all?) cards that require the new PCIe 5.0 connector will come with a high-quality adapter to use, or if you’re connector averse, you’ll need to purchase a new power supply that has the connector attached natively (will be ATX 3.0 spec). Price notwithstanding, our overall take on these cards is that they are one hell of an improvement over the previous generation. All of the updated hardware and DLSS 3.0 combine to form, by far, the fastest graphics card we’ve tested. Even without DLSS in use the card is 14% faster at 1080p, 32% faster at 2560×1440, and 60% faster at 4K UHD in our tests which is one of the more significant jumps we’ve seen (in higher resolution) in generations. Add the DLSS 3.0 in and ray tracing improvements, and it makes AMD’s job to beat it on a performance front incredibly difficult. While I wouldn’t rush out to get one of these if I had a 3000 series and it was performing well for my needs, those with older cards have a real reason to upgrade if the price points for all of these cards don’t get in the way.

This is the gear that everybody in the enthusiast crowd is waiting to see; board partner cards, all custom, tweaked and cooled more satisfactory, the SUPRIM Liquid X certainly fits that description with that AIO liquid cooler mounted on top of that ADA GPU. In a perfect world where money and energy isn't an object, this easily is my favourite card to one in the 4090 series. I like products as silent as they can be. So from a hardware point of view, everything ... really everything MSI did here has been done right. Even the 150 USD price premium is a fair one considering the price range we're in. The looks are fantastic as well with a nice two-tone brushed aluminium design on the cooler shroud and backplate, giving it an alien look. Except for the required NVIDIA-designed adaptor, which transforms four 8-pin PCIe power connectors into a 12+4 pin 12VHPWR. Three DisplayPort and one HDMI are available as video outputs. A sleek, nearly three-dimensional-looking backplate with a brushed aluminium finish is included. A dual-BIOS switch is located close to the power jack, of course, we say leave that fracker at silent mode as performance wise it ain;t gonna matter and your GPU at 65 Degrees C under heavy load is already excellent. A good chunk of extra shader cores, nearly double performance Raytracing and Tensor cores, and underlying technologies like Shader Execution Reordering (SER) and DLSS 3.0 make the new product and Series 4000 shine.

Manual OC worked very well on the Suprim Liquid X, just like on the Suprim X. Both cards reached over 500 FPS after manual OC—a new record. The differences between all RTX 4090 cards so far are fairly small though, and the silicon lottery also plays a role here. According to MSI, the RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X will sell for $1750, which is a surprisingly small increase of $150 over the NVIDIA Founders Edition baseline pricing for RTX 4090. The air-cooled Suprim X goes for $1700, so an extra $50 for the watercooler is very reasonable. We're not aware of any model that sells for below $1600. These $150 get you 3% higher performance out of the box, a fantastic water cooler, nice RGB lighting and a dual BIOS. What makes the Liquid X stand out is that it takes up only two slots in your system, even the NVIDIA Founders Edition is triple slot. Of course you still need the space to fit the radiator, but it's an interesting alternative to class air-cooled cards. What I really like is that MSI is slowing down the pump's speed when idle, which eliminates the permanent "hum" noise that all other GPU watercooling solutions had (that I'm aware of).

We unbox the next-gen ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4090 OC Edition and MSI GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM LIQUID and SUPRIM X graphics cards... oh boy!

MSI debuted the SUPRIM line of graphics cards as its flagship custom-design products, positioned a segment above the Gaming series. It essentially de-cluttered the segment for MSI, as it effectively replaced both the Lightning and Gaming Z brand extensions into a single one, with a significantly different design. The MSI RTX 4090 SUPRIM Liquid X has the same "exalted" appearance as air-cooled cards from the RTX 30-series, with a 2-tone brushed-aluminium appearance on the cooler shroud and backplate. The card gets the highest state of factory-overclocking from MSI and the VRM to match it. In its liquid-cooled avatar, this card features a 240 mm AIO to pull heat from the GPU and memory, while a set of heatsinks ventilated by a single 100 mm fan, cool the rest of the card. The advantage of going liquid is in the thickness.