Earlier in May, ASUS launched its ROG Astral RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition GPU for the Middle Eastern market, with an SRP of more than US$7,000 (~RM29,715). Fast forward a month later and scalpers who’ve managed to get their hands on the card are now selling what is essentially a collector’s item for more than the retail price on eBay. Like, way more.
According to multiple reports, scalpers are selling the RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition GPU for as much as US$23,000 (~RM97,653). For the mathematically-challenged, that’s more than three times the asking price of the card. That’s a ridiculous amount to ask for a GPU, and far exceeds the value of the 65.g of gold that was used to build the card. As a quick primer, 1g of gold is currently worth about RM473. So, 6.5g of gold would be worth RM3,074, and that’s before you take the price of ASUS’ labour for the card into consideration.
The ROG Astral RTX 5090 is currently rated as the world’s fastest GPU, and what makes the Dhahab Edition so special is its aesthetics; an exercise in excess and luxury, the gold has a fineess of 999, and sports emerald accents that can be seen all over the card’s cooler shroud.
As luxurious as this card is, the card’s worth relative to its performance will clearly depreciate, and will become redundant when NVIDIA releases its next generation GPU architecture in the next two years, until the only thing valuable of the card would be the gold used in its constructions. That being said, if spending a near RM100,000 is of no consequence to you, and you want to own one of the most powerful RTX 5090 GPUs on the market, and you’re willing to travel to one of the Middle Eastern countries that sells the card, then be our guest.
(Source: Tom’s Hardware, TweakTown, PCGamesN)
