Graphics card sagging, whereas as soon as a non-issue, has turn into a real menace to their lifespan, inflicting them to fail a lot prior to regular. As playing cards turn into extra highly effective, additionally they turn into a lot bigger and heavier in design, which suggests they have a tendency to sag if not supported on each side within the PC case.
As German pc restore technician KrisFix (opens in new tab) explains (and reported on by Tom’s Hardware) when a graphics card sags on account of this elevated weight, “reminiscence modules can lose reference to its related solder factors on the PCB.” There’s additionally the difficulty of thermal variance, attributable to the every day use of the cardboard underneath sag circumstances.
In line with KrisFix, This appears to be a serious trigger for why the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, thought-about one of many finest graphics playing cards ever (and nonetheless a wonderful contender as we speak), has been failing prior to anticipated.
And for the reason that 2080 Ti, graphics playing cards have solely turn into heavier, which places the RTX 3000-series and particularly the brick-like 4000-series at an excellent greater threat for failure afterward in its life.
What’s being executed about it?
Plainly producers are lastly changing into extra conscious of the problems surrounding graphics playing cards sag, and extra are developing with a easy technique to fight it: utilizing some sort of assist beam to maintain the cardboard degree on the unsupported aspect.
Some have these helps built-in the PC case like Cooler Grasp’s assist bracket, whereas others just like the Manli Gallardo RTX 4090 graphics card itself are geared up with two spirit ranges. And because the idea turns into extra widespread, we needs to be seeing extra of them cropping up and finally changing into a regular in each PC circumstances and graphics playing cards.
However what in regards to the present customers, those who already made their buy years in the past and might be going through imminent catastrophic GPU failure? You may have your PC modded by official or unofficial restore providers to present it a bracket or degree, however that might be fairly costly.
Naturally, there are cheaper options and guides on how one can go about constructing them, the whole lot from Lego blocks to hooking string round your GPU to stabilize it. So there’s hope for you so long as an excessive amount of injury hasn’t already been executed to the one that you love graphics card simply but. In any other case, you might need to spend money on a model new one, just like the RTX 4070 that launched on April 13.