> Gigabyte-branded 5090 PCIe GPU

The hottest one on the consumer market

> The eGPU box has some custom cooling

Custom liquid cooling to tame the enormous TDP

> and a nice little PSU

Yeah, an 850W one.

>were to design one of their GPU cards specifically and only to be shipped inside an eGPU enclosure that was designed together with it

And why they would do so?

Do you understand what it would drive the price a lot?

> at a better price(!)

With less production/sales numbers than a regular 5090 GPU? No way. Economics 101.

> the card being this weird nonstandard-form-factor non-card-edged thing

Even if we skip the small series nuances (which makes this a non-starter by the price alone), there is a little what some other 'nonstandard-form-factor' can do for the cooling - you still need the RAM near the chip... and that's all. You just designed the same PCIe card for the sake of it being incompatible..

> won't ... plug into a PCIe slot

Again - why? What this would provide what the current PCIe GPU lacks? BTW you still need the 16 lines of PCIe and you know which connector provides the most useful and cost effective way to do so? A regular 16x PCIe connector. That one you ditched.

> the card being shaped less like a peripheral card and more like a motherboard

You don't need to 're-design it from scratch', it's enough not to be constrained with a 25cm limit to have a proper air-flow along a properly oriented radiator.

> why those factory-sealed Samsung T-series external NVMe pucks

Lol: https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-am-i-taking-this-samsung-t...