Nvidia's RTX 5090 has been a subject of much speculation recently, as it was rumoured to be discontinued last month when it vanished from the company's official marketplace, only for Nvidia to confirm it wasn't discontinued. The plot has thickened, though, as AIB partners—the companies actually designing and manufacturing RTX 50 series graphics cards—suggest even they can't get their hands on the parts required to make the card.
This is according to an Nvidia AIB partner who spoke to YouTuber Der8auer. They say, "No, Nvidia did not inform us that RTX 5090 is EOL. But currently we cannot purchase GB202 [the GPU] together with 32 GB GDDR7 as [a] complete set, and we also don't know if ordering will be possible again in the future."
The unnamed board partner clarifies that in previous shortages, they could place backorders with Nvidia, but this is "currently not possible anymore."
This is all to say that this AIB partner is unable to get the GPU and memory required to make the RTX 5090, and doesn't know when that supply issue will be fixed. Though this isn't the card being discontinued, for many partners, not getting the GPU and VRAM is as good as doing so.
Whether it's the GPU or the memory that's causing the biggest headache isn't specified, though in the current context, one can assume it's likely both to some degree.
As of right now, companies are reliant on GPU and VRAM bundles from Nvidia before they can make their own cards. There have previously been rumours that Nvidia would stop bundling its GPUs and VRAM together, but even if it did that, this would only partly solve the issue of the memory crisis for Nvidia. Those who might have been able to buy just the GPU would still be subject to a price squeeze on the VRAM when trying to source it direct from one of the major memory manufacturers.
Der8auer also spoke to an RTX 5090 cooler manufacturer who said, "Two of our partners already reduced quite much the order forecast for RTX 5090 based heatsinks in Q1 2027, when compare[d] with Q3 2026."
"For Q2 2027, until now we still did not receive any order for RTX 5090 model heatsinks from our partners."
Nvidia still remains steadfast in saying the card has not been discontinued, though it acknowledges that limited supply chain capacity has led to a "somewhat constrained" output. Its German branch says, "Nvidia will continue to ship it, and this is very important."
The RTX 5090 (an already expensive card at its previous MSRP of $2,000) has been prohibitively expensive for months. It's so pricey, in fact, that we stopped tracking it in our graphics card price watch. It has been incredibly difficult to find any of the cards available from reputable sellers at even reasonable prices (with some listed for upwards of $8,000 right now) and therefore we could never recommend actually picking one up. Though it may not be officially discontinued, it seems like the likelihood of picking one up soon at a decent price is getting slimmer and slimmer by the day.