No not really ... only with the advent of CLC or hybrid coolers has this design become popular. There were always Full Cover and GPU water blocks tho. Cards that sell well make it worthwhile to design and market full cover water blocks ... for the rest, there was the GPU only water block.
Go back quite a few years and the GPU was the performance limiter. In recent years, the VRM temp is as likely to limit an OC ans the the GPU temp.
Having the acrylic go all the way to the board edge is a *new * think for EK, none of my other EK blacks do this... they usually run from the slot hardware edge and end right where the nickel ends