Let me say right off the bat that I don't think you should buy this for the RTX 3080, but also fully expect many to buy it anyway. There's just something appealing about the water block sandwich with the GPU PCB in the middle that tickles many in all the right places, including some that make us take out our wallets and pay what ends up being $325 for the reference PCB GPU block and active backplate combination. As such, it comes in at $100 more than the "regular" backplate, which itself ends up scavenged to make one of these, so I suppose you could say the active part comes in at $100 in addition to the integrated d-RGB lighting that is a buck at most in total.

With DIY watercooling a niche thing in the larger, albeit still niche market of DIY PC assembly, I shudder to think of the even smaller subset for products such as this active backplate. RAM and add-in card SSD watercooling are mostly a thing of the past now, but active backplates continue this trend of watercooling products for only the most hardcore of watercooling fans (pun unintended). There is a justifiable use case, though, especially if you have the RTX 3090. Allow me to also point out that several RTX 3090 water block and backplate combinations approach the $325 mark, or even exceed it with Founders Edition cooling options.

There is clearly a market here, going by the user mods and add-on accessories made thus far, so much so that at least three companies have been and will be bringing out active backplates. I would not be surprised to see more follow suit, especially if rumors of the RTX 3090 Ti come to fruition. I gave EK a hard time for taking shortcuts with the GPU block installation, which is also the case here, but also acknowledge that it resulted in one less factor to consider when bringing the active backplate to market. It also had the EK offering reach global retail channels earlier than the competition, netting them sales to where the first batch is already sold out. This is a novel case of where something extravagant is also somewhat practical, and the design works well enough to interest many potential customers.