When I went about doing a big GPU block roundup, I knew I had to prepare for a few sticker shocks with many blocks increasing in cost owing to the rising material cost over the last couple of years, especially for copper and aluminium. The average GPU block last gen was in the $150+ range without a back plate included. Now we are seeing them in the $250+ range with a back plate included. It's hard to swallow when CPU blocks are somehow still available in the <$100 range. CPU and GPU blocks also go through iterative designs in that the cooling engine and the aesthetics package around only changes drastically every few years, with most brands opting to only have small changes here and there for socket/PCB compatibility. As such, we have here some new gen block designs and some pre-existing ones. CORSAIR hasn't really changed things much in the GPU block realm and yet prices have consistently gone up. It asked $140 for the equivalent block and backplate with the debuting GTX 1080 cooling solution which went up to $150 with the next version for the RTX 2080, $170 with the same for the RTX 3080 reference PCB, and now $200 for the RTX 4080/4090 FE PCB. This aftermarket PCB block had an MSRP of $225 but is currently reduced to $205, still a big increase considering we no longer get thermal pads on the back plate.

In fact, CORSAIR was the value offering for years and now it no longer boasts that. Even if you discard the Chinese block makers such as Barrow and Bykski, for whatever reason, there's now Alphacool with the Core 1 costing less. Phanteks has two different color options for its GPU block starting at the same MSRP too. At this point, the CORSAIR Hydro XG7 doesn't get a recommendation for its performance either since the Alphacool Core 1 also outperforms the XG7 almost every which way. The one thing in CORSAIR's favor is the ease of installation but even that is becoming less of an incentive when you ship a backplate that doesn't seem to do much thermally, if at all. Then there is iCUE for lighting control which I am a fan of again given the updated modular design but it will continue to have people dislike it vehemently. You do not need to use iCUE at all and can instead just control the LEDs using your motherboard LED header and software if you so desire. Lastly, there is a small set of people who can't easily purchase the other blocks covered in this roundup whereas CORSAIR enjoys a large retail channel presence. So there will always be people who will end up purchasing the Hydro XG7 block even outside of aesthetic preferences. But overall I don't see enough to recommend it in general when there are seemingly better options for less.