I was looking on Corsair's website, window-shopping as all PC enthusiasts do, and I decided to see if they did anything new in the custom cooling space. I was delighted to see that they have. Several new waterblocks are available, including a revised version of the XC7 CPU block and a black version of the XC9. But what caught my attention the most were the two new GPU water blocks, for the founders edition RTX 3080 and 3090. And, as expected from everything made by Corsair, they look beautiful.
The block is much shorter than the previous XG7s, since the FE cards sport a shortened PCB. Also, the inlet and outlet ports have been changed from the solid black plastic of the previous XG7s to semi-transparent acrylic, which shows off the block's RGB lighting (This effect is better shown than described, so I've put a few pictures of it down below). In addition to this, the top part has been changed to resemble Corsair's Dominator Platinum RGB memory, which I find oddly amusing since if the ports were removed it would look like a more cartoony version of that memory. They've also changed the design of the backplate, which now instead of having the Hydro X logo on it has a very cool-looking design consisting of dozens of light-gray triangles, all of which surround the new Corsair logo (which, by the way, I am VERY much a fan of, since it looks a lot cleaner). All of these revisions make the block look a lot nicer in my opinion, but it's all aaesthetic up to this point. The least obvious of the revisions is the most important one of all.
Corsair's previous XG7 blocks for the RTX 20 series were great. They were, at least in my opinion, the best looking waterblocks out there, but they had a somewhat major design flaw: if pressure was put on the front of the top part with the ports, the block would forcefully jet out the coolant from that area. This was because Corsair only used two screws to hold that part in place, with nothing holding the middle down. The situation where this flaw becomes something you need to worry about is very specific and rare, but it was a flaw nonetheless. With the new XG7s, Corsair went and added a THIRD screw holding the top in place by the middle, which should completely eliminate the problem. Even though it's not a situation most people would find themselves in, I'm glad Corsair fixed this problem, because it shows that they actually listen to their customers.
I haven't gotten my hands on one of these blocks yet (don't think anyone has actually), and even if I did the cards themselves are rarer than TF2 updates, but from what I can tell they're beautiful and definitely worth considering for those who are thinking on professionally voiding their card's warranty.