>I'll admit they look nice, but the performance wasn't too
>competitive.
True, but sometimes being practical as it is, tipped the scales in their favour. Having a waterblock that takes alot of work to assemble (including taking out the shim) , but performes very good, versus a waterblock that you can mount in "1,2,3 presto", alot of people go for the second option.
And there arent that many GPU blocks supporting 1/2". At least in this part of the Atlantic

. Most stuff here is zalman, innovatek or aqua computer. And for my 1/2" system, that's a "no no".