Back when EVGA made NVIDIA graphics cards, the firm produced certain high-end models with overclocker Kingpin – and these special edition cards are coming back to the GPU market, except with PNY this time.
2Vince ‘Kingpin’ Lucido and Illya ‘TiN’ Tsemenko with the EVGA GTX 780 Ti Classified Kingpin Edition back in 2013
VIEW GALLERY – 2 IMAGES
Those who are familiar with the Kingpin brand will, of course, know that these are graphics cards built in conjunction with the high-profile overclocker of the same name (Vince ‘Kingpin’ Lucido).
As uncovered in an interview with Gamers Nexus (via VideoCardz), Kingpin’s next move is to partner with PNY to produce graphics cards built for overclocking to fill the “huge hole in the enthusiast market.”
The overclocking expert is already working on designs and a new graphics card with the Kingpin brand could be due this year from PNY. While the RTX 5000 series isn’t mentioned by name, we can guess that this will be a Blackwell GPU, and likely the RTX 5090.
There’s some excitement at the news, and some trepidation – mostly around PNY not being the biggest name in the world of graphics card makers.
But Kingpin clearly feels it’s a good fit, and we should wait to see the products before we judge – though there are some concerns around warranty service being as good as EVGA. Anecdotally, PNY doesn’t seem to have the worst reputation among PC gamers, mind, warranty-wise – not by a long shot.
If you recall, the last Kingpin models from EVGA were the RTX 3090 and 3090 Ti, before the company withdrew as RTX 4000 rolled around.
Going by a EVGA forum post we dug up – from a keen collector who has them all – these were the Kingpin models from EVGA down the line.
- EVGA GTX 780 Ti Classified Kingpin
- EVGA GTX 980 Classified Kingpin
- EVGA GTX 980 Ti Kingpin
- EVGA GTX 1080 Ti Kingpin
- EVGA RTX 2080 Ti Kingpin
- EVGA RTX 3090 Kingpin
- EVGA RTX 3090 Ti Kingpin
Next stop, the PNY RTX 5090 Kingpin, then?