Heavy VGA cards without support – It seems that VGA or graphics card technology is currently trending towards larger body sizes. Just take a look at the latest NVIDIA RTX flagship series, the 4090, which is longer than most motherboards. This certainly raises concerns that the heavy weight of these cards may cause detrimental consequences.
A phenomenon called GPU Sagging often occurs, which is when a VGA card bends on the PCB board and becomes curved. This mostly happens to large-sized cards with at least triple fans and more than two slots.
Use of Heavy VGA Cards is Indicated to Damage VRAM Modules Without Support
This issue has caught the attention of users as sagging like this is feared to damage components or PCIe sockets. And it turns out that this issue can indeed damage one of the components of high-end RTX 20 and 30 series VGA cards.
Cases of VGA cards being damaged due to sagging were discovered by a computer repair service in Germany called KrisFix through their YouTube channel (via Tomshardware). In their video, they demonstrated an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti VGA card that was damaged because the VRAM module with GDDR6 memory at the bottom of the VGA card had loose connections. If this is indeed true, it is likely that this issue will not only affect NVIDIA VGA cards in the future, but also AMD’s red team.
In the case mentioned above, the VRAM module with GDDR6 memory near the PCIe x16 lane had broken connections and was loose due to the curved PCB board. This was caused by the weight of the heatsink that had to be supported by the thin PCB board.
This loose connection will cause oxidation on the contact points of the VRAM due to loose soldering. KrisFix fixed this issue by reballing the problematic memory chip.
No Need for Special VGA Brackets, Everyday Objects Can Be Used
If the laws of physics cannot be defied, it seems that the use of VGA support brackets has become a necessity for users with large-sized VGA cards. This issue is indeed concerning, and as a user, it is highly recommended to use VGA support brackets to prevent such issues from occurring.
However, if special brackets are considered too expensive, there are many everyday objects that can be used to support VGA cards. This can range from toys like Lego, or even wooden blocks as long as they are non-conductive or made of non-metal materials.
