I've been on a small case run for... a decade, probably. Not ITX necessarily, but as compact as ATX can get. A lot of that was budget; since I wasn't willing to pay up for the top-end heat-belching CPUs and GPUs, I could get away with something smaller, and smaller cases with decent airflow, noise control, and even dust filtering had become available.well even just running the fins lengthwise down the card and keeping everything else the same would help. I get the aesthetic they were aiming for, but with this design all that is going to happen is anybody who puts it in a case capable of showing off the pretty card is going to have a big old caked on dust layer right over it. Filters be damned it is gonna happen, I have no doubt that any decent degree of case fans will vent this out so its mostly a non issue but still.... Given the hate so many AMD users have given the 3000 cards for blowing that heat back into the case why are they praising these cards for doing the same thing.
I'm over it.
With more cores and GPU die size going up, more volume is needed to strike a good balance between top-tier performance, noise, and maintainability.
As for the GPU showcase mount most cases include these days, well, I'd rather have an AIO anyway, so non-issue here .