Graphics card sagging, whereas as soon as a non-issue, has grow to be a real menace to their lifespan, inflicting them to fail a lot before regular. As playing cards grow to be extra highly effective, additionally they grow to be a lot bigger and heavier in design, which implies they have a tendency to sag if not supported on either side within the PC case.

As German laptop restore technician KrisFix (opens in new tab) explains (and reported on by Tom’s {Hardware}) when a graphics card sags because 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 day by day use of the cardboard beneath sag situations.

In line with KrisFix, This appears to be a serious trigger for why the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, thought of the most effective graphics playing cards ever (and nonetheless a wonderful contender in the present day), has been failing before anticipated.

And because the 2080 Ti, graphics playing cards have solely grow to be heavier, which places the RTX 3000-series and particularly the brick-like 4000-series at a good increased threat for failure in a while in its life. 

What’s being executed about it?

Evidently producers are lastly changing into extra conscious of the problems surrounding graphics playing cards sag, and extra are arising with a easy option to fight it: utilizing some type of assist beam to maintain the cardboard degree on the unsupported facet.

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 outfitted 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 concerning the present customers, those who already made their buy years in the past and may very well be going through imminent catastrophic GPU failure? You’ll be able to have your PC modded by official or unofficial restore companies to present it a bracket or degree, however that may very well be fairly costly.

Naturally, there are cheaper options and guides on learn how to go about constructing them, every thing 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 you love graphics card simply but. In any other case, you might need to put money into a model new one, just like the RTX 4070 that launched on April 13.