Remember that mysterious RTX 5080 GPU with an SSD slot? Well, turns out Asus has a plan for it, and of course it involves AI and LLM

• Asus RTX 5080 now doubles as AI hardware and a surprisingly cool SSD bay
• PCIe lanes aren’t just for GPUs anymore, thanks to Asus’ hybrid hardware approach
• Asus is developing Multi-LM so AI devs can offload models straight to onboard SSDs

The unusual GeForce RTX 5080 GPU, first spotted a few weeks ago with an SSD slot, is no longer just a hardware oddity.

Asus North America has now confirmed the ProArt RTX 5080 SSD Edition is a real product.

As unusual as it may sound, the decision to pair high-performance graphics processing with solid-state storage is part of a broader plan involving artificial intelligence and local model development.