It's here, almost, sort of. The Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition has landed on our desk and, well, it's a big old hector. There's a reason for that, of course, it is absurdly powerful. The RTX 3090 is still overkill for pretty much everything and the RTX 4090 blows that out of the water.

But there's still been plenty of chatter about the physical stature of this goliath of graphics. At the time of writing, any discussion of performance is still under embargo, but we are allowed to show off the actual graphics card. So we shall.

But it's hard to get a sense of scale from just looking at photos of it. So, let's put it next to some familiar objects for some size comparisons, shall we?

First up, the RTX 4090 and the Xbox Series S. Because the first time I opened the box I said "wow, I bet it's as big as my son's Xbox." And it pretty much is. It's about as tall, a little thicker but not quite as deep. Then again, it doesn't have a power supply inside, either. But Jez Corden over at Windows Central ran the numbers and by volume, it seems the RTX 4090 is actually bigger. So there we go.

RTX 4090 and Xbox Series S

How about next to a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi Max? Yup, it's pretty big next to this as well.

RTX 4090 and Pepsi Max 2 liter

Banana for scale.

RTX 4090 and banana for scale

We've sized it up against the Xbox Series S, but what about the Series X and the PS5? Fortunately, Sony's giant games console exists to always remind us how things could be worse.

RTX 4090, PS5 and Xbox Series X

Remember the Xbox mini fridge? The RTX 4090 fits inside it, just. Perhaps that could be useful for cooling somehow?

RTX 4090 inside the Xbox mini fridge

The Steam Deck is pretty big as well. But it's still smaller overall than the RTX 4090. And infinitely more portable.

RTX 4090 and Steam Deck

And for good measure let's see how the RTX 4090 absolutely dwarfs the brand-new Intel Arc A770 Limited Edition. Then again you could pick up four of the Intel cards for the price of one RTX 4090 and still have some change left over. So, there is that.

RTX 4090 and Intel Arc A770

We're obviously just having a bit of fun with this. And some of the third-party versions of the RTX 4090 are going to make the Founders Edition look tiny in comparison. You would assume it's this big because it needs to be this big in order to cool the GPU, which is totally fine. But size is a real thing that real PC builders will have to contend with. If this thing is just too large for your PC then you have decisions to be making. Do you get a new PC case or a smaller graphics card?

We've got high hopes for the RTX 4090. Even if actually living with one could be a little inconvenient.