GIGABYTE Radeon RX 6900 XT AORUS Xtreme WaterForce WB Pictured, Based on XTXH Silicon

[ratirt]

Exactly my point.
I bought the 6800XT that I had before in end of Novmber 2020 for 999€ but these sell starting 1500€ now. 500€ more in few months.

6800XT Geizhals Deutschland

Preisvergleich und Testberichte für 6800XT

geizhals.de

So it would be unfair to say to somebody who buy 6800XT now for 1500€ that for 1800€ RTX 3090 can blow you out of water.
Minimum price of 3090 now is 2800€. 3090 has gone 1000€ up since few months.

I know and I agree with you fully. It's a silly thing to say 3090 is way better and costs less because somebody bought it for the price that the 6900xt goes for now or cheaper few months ago. Like the prices for the 3090 didn't go up. In fact they did and way more than 6900xt's did.
If I look now, the 6900xt red devil's price is higher than what I've payed for it.

 

[Colddecked]

I thought the whole point of liquid cooling is making VGA more compact. Custom liquid cooled card which is still ~300mm long is madness.

As a reference 3090 (from Palit) with EK block+active backplate is 220mm long and 240mm with EVGA Powerlink adapter attached. After I've removed my old 3 1080Tis it's so tiny and case is so empty, it's hilarious.

On third photo you can clearly see how short card circuitry really is (tiny visible notch below backplate where coldplate ends), but Gigabyte then adds like 5 cm of PCB to accommodate those stupid power connector extensions they are so infamous for (photo 4). They simply took aircooled card and adapted it as cheaply as possible.

That's because the 3090/3080 reference pcb is like half the size of normal cards. The water cooler does make the card much more compact though, look at how many slots the air cooler takes up.