MSI's upcoming overclocking beast just smashed some world records. The unreleased GeForce RTX 5090 Lightning Z, a special model sent only to elite overclockers, has hit a staggering clock speed of nearly 3.75 GHz and memory speeds up to 36 Gbps, surpassing previous records.
The card, featuring a monstrous 40-phase power design and dual 16-pin connectors, was pushed using liquid nitrogen cooling. It achieved top scores across multiple benchmarks, including a GPUPI 1B time of 0.730 seconds, a 3DMark Port Royal score of 49,812, and a Geekbench 6 compute result exceeding 513,000 points. Overclockers like Alva Jonathan also revealed the card will come with an extreme BIOS supporting a power limit up to 2500 watts, higher than competing models.
MSI plans to officially unveil the retail version of the RTX 5090 Lightning Z at CES 2026. The current record-breaking units are non-retail engineering samples with basic heatsinks, distributed specifically for competitive overclocking.
The card, featuring a monstrous 40-phase power design and dual 16-pin connectors, was pushed using liquid nitrogen cooling. It achieved top scores across multiple benchmarks, including a GPUPI 1B time of 0.730 seconds, a 3DMark Port Royal score of 49,812, and a Geekbench 6 compute result exceeding 513,000 points. Overclockers like Alva Jonathan also revealed the card will come with an extreme BIOS supporting a power limit up to 2500 watts, higher than competing models.
MSI plans to officially unveil the retail version of the RTX 5090 Lightning Z at CES 2026. The current record-breaking units are non-retail engineering samples with basic heatsinks, distributed specifically for competitive overclocking.
