Graphics card sag has become a huge issue due to the chunky heatsinks modern graphics cards are packing. What was once an issue only with the highest-end cards of the previous generations is now plaguing every major RTX 30 series or RX 6000 series offering. The modern cards come with huge power requirements and, thus, the GPU outputs a lot of heat that needs to be dissipated. Plus, the newer GDDR6X memory standard is extremely hot running, which adds up to the heatsink mass being added to keep temperatures under control.
But, how can you prevent graphics cards from sagging? Let us look at two examples: one at the manufacturer level, and another at the user level.
How Manufacturers are Combatting Graphics Card Sag
Graphics card sag is a thing because the tail of cards, away from the PCIe slot, is being extensively used to pack in extra heatsink masses. Some graphics card manufacturers have started to even out heatsink weight distribution to combat this issue. This change in the design language has helped reduce graphics cards sag by a huge margin, passively.
Some manufacturers have also included a support bracket just below the PCB inside the card. This is giving cards extra reinforcement and solves the issue of graphics card sag.
How an End User Can Prevent Their Cards From Sagging
An end-user cannot do much about preventing graphics card sagging. But, they can buy an anti-sag bracket to add support points for their GPUs. Most of these graphics card sag brackets are quite cheap. At around $10, you can get some fancy designs with RGB. These sag brackets act like a permanent solution to GPU sag, but, they take up to 3 PCIe slots. This prevents you from adding extra expansion cards to your system.
GPU sag can be prevented if measures are taken from Day 1 of buying a new chunky graphics card. Although with time technology should become smaller, more power-efficient, while being more capable, we are not seeing the first two trends continue with graphics cards.