It's looking like NVIDIA (and by extension, the board partners) got caught with their pants down on the cooling solution.
Basically, mid-way through bringing the 4000 series to market, they switched manufacturers and manufacturing process.
Previously, the chips had some fairly sizeable thermal demands.
Hence the giant, case-filling cooling solutions.
But the process switch brought all of that under control. But too late to change cooler design.
So you have these cards
3090 Strix vs 3080
3080FE vs 4090FE
3080 vs 4090 Strix
4090FE vs 4090 Strix
And note: The actual "CARD" (the PCB) is only roughly HALF the length of the FE unit!
But the Asus unit? 14 INCHES LONG! (Bow chicka bow wow!)
And most of the cards? 3.5 slots.
The other Asus SKU? The TUF line? 3.65!
PS5 vs 4090 Strix vs 3090 Strix.
I think second-gen SKUs will be slimmed down by a much more modest cooler. And water cooling rigs will be downright SLIM