Yeah the only point of going for AIBs now seems to be for lower fan noise, cooling, and look/build quality if you care about that but even then the FE models have caught up in those departments. Personally probably gonna try and get a 4080 FE next year when prices on it inevitably drop once RTX 30 supply clears.

4090 FE has been getting great reviews so far from tech outlets and I expect it will be the same for the 4080 FE. Nvidia has really stepped up the design quality of their FE cards in recent years. It does suck that it seems like they're disregarding their AIB partners at this point but for consumers its nice to have a good quality FE option at MSRP.