MSI recently launched its new RTX 5090 Lightning Z GPU, priced at a cheekily ridiculous $5,090 and aimed at extreme overclockers. That means overclocking for achieving world records, not just unlocking extra performance. As such, YouTuber Alva Jonatahan — whose escapades we've covered before — accepted the challenge and pushed this card to its absolute limits, and apparently past those, since it ended up dying in a sudden moment of thermal shock that cracked the GPU.
Jonathan was actually contacted back in August 2025 by MSI Taiwan to join the team as a consultant on the development of this GPU. He was then sent two early samples of the PCB without the cooler and three more retail samples afterward. Jonathan had to construct his own cooler for testing before eventually moving on to liquid nitrogen to pursue those sweet, sweet records.
