Don't let your chonk graphics card sag or it might actually die
Where will the ever increasing elephantism of modern graphics cards like the monstrous Nvidia RTX 4090(opens in new tab) end? In dead GPUs, it seems. A German computer repair technician has reported that Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti boards are now routinely failing due to the stress caused by the heavy graphics card sagging in the socket.
KrisFix(opens in new tab) (via Tom's Hardware(opens in new tab)) says that some of the card's memory chips can suffer from failing solder points due to the board flexing under heavy sag in the PCI Express socket. It's the chips located nearest the socket that fail because that's where the board bends the most.
Cards that fail in this manner can be repaired, but re-balling and soldering the memory chips isn't excatly a straight-forward DIY job.
The better option is preventative measures and happily that's actually pretty straight forward. One easy option is an anti-sag bracket which many larger graphics cards do indeed include in the box.
Another option is a vertical graphics card mount(opens in new tab) that allows you to rotate the board through 90 degrees and remove all the stress. Either that or let's all return to those clever landscape PCs of yore, you know the ones in beige boxes, and forget all these silly tower PCs and their sagging GPUs.
If you've been running a big old card without support don't immediately panic. RTX 2080 Ti cards are now over four years old, so it takes a while for the stress of hanging from a socket to cause failure.
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