Video Games Tutorials and News - How To Fix Gpu Sag Once And For All. Free
Today we're going to talk about how to stop GPU sag once and for all, end of story, for free. No more, you know, having this awesome build and then you look and it just looks like your graphics card needs Viagra. We're going to go ahead and show you guys how to fix it. Bring your entire setup together with IQ from Corsair.
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So I've got to show you guys first and foremost what is actually happening here with sag. We're going to be using our gundam build that we did so. As I was saying, it's kind of two-fold. As to the problem here, one, the graphics cards have gotten bigger and heavier over the years because of their wattage, and heat has gone up because of the card manufacturers.
The real issue here, and I'm going to demonstrate this by showing you some older version cards and some newer version cards. First and foremost, the coolers in just about every single instance, well just about not all of them, but just about every instance, is much bigger than the card. So if we take a look at our Strix 3080 here, you can see that the PCB only goes as far as where these screws are right here.
It's taller, of course. As you can see, the PCB does come all the way out to the edge, which is a good 30 millimeters or so taller than the standard height of a graphics card. Now you're only mounting your graphics card into your case with two points of triangulation. The brackets that attach to the back and then the motherboard slot itself.
Now the motherboard slot isn't doing anything other than keeping it from falling. But because the point of contact is all the way on one extreme and the other point of contact is all the way here, you've got this well, this non-triangulated place where things are being mounted, which means all of the weight that is being supported here is being cantilevered by all the weight out here.
When you start to have all this extra weight in these triple slot cards with these big old heatsinks and stuff on them, they weigh four or five pounds in many instances. The cards, naturally, want to sag because since we're supported here, weight is pulling it down here and that's what happens. It starts to pull away from the points on which it's mounted.
Now the strix card is actually, of all the ones on the table here for 30 series, probably the least offender when it comes to sag. The reason for that, quite simply, is the fact that if you take a look at the double bracket here, it's supported. So you can see how I can't push it in like the cooler itself, although if you look closely right here, you can see it just sort of wraps the bracket just sort of wraps over the cooler.
So this is why the card itself doesn't sag too badly. I mean, I obviously undid the anti-sag support. It's built into this case, and it's sad that case manufacturers have had to start doing something like this because of card manufacturers, Are you just breaking a cardinal rule of support? Let's take a look at the tough series.
This is the 3080 tuff, and although it is more hollow in there, take a look at that. You can see all the way through it. It's pretty hollow in there. They do at least make contact here. You can see where the cooler and the bracket touch each other. It's the same deal where it's not screwed down and connected, but it is at least giving it a point of contact to touch right when you're climbing a ladder or you're climbing a radio tower or whatever is osha safety.
It's about three points of contact; right two feet, one hand, two hands, one foot. You always have to have at least three points of contact. Your face on something doesn't count, but although this is not screwed down, you can see that if I push it. It still has a lot of flex. Do you see that? You see how much flex is moving there?
That flex is exactly what's flexing when the card sags. You have all this weight pushing down and if there's nothing to support it going this way, the card goes that way. I'm exaggerating it, obviously. The toughest is, well, it looks the part, but it still has a lot of In fact, let me show you real quickly.
It's screwed down now, only one screw, but still look at this. All that flex If you look down inside there, Phil, if you look down right here, do you see that there's nothing to support the card? It's just wobbling all around because there's nothing for it to touch. I shook it more than twice. You're playing with it.
I'm playing with it right now. That is a hundred percent. It is not ASUS's fault because they did not support the card in any way in a spot where all of that force was going to be diverted. Let's take a look at the msi card here. They at least added this bracket. This is the l-shaped bracket that mounts to the little i-o shield here.
I don't know if you call it the IO shield, but whatever the little tab is, it still mounts to the card. It comes all the way across right here. So that is designed to give it some level of support. The issue with this card is the fact that it does it at the top of the bracket, and although it does, if you look in there, you can see how it comes down and screws in right there, so it goes in and then down.
I feel like if they brought this bracket all the way across and mounted it on the bottom, you would have less flex, so there's a point of flex there because if you look in there. That one's completely hollow; there is nothing in there whatsoever, although it is stronger than the tough. It's still going to have some flex, not as bad though.
Look at that. I haven't screwed it down yet and it's already doing better than the tough card. It's still completely horizontal. It's not even touching the anti-sag thing, and we haven't even, so all I would do is I would push as much force as I could that way to put as much tightness on that top screw as I could to keep it from sagging when it finally has weight applied to it sags to level.
That's usually what I aim for, but there are some cards in them on the market that I love. You have the worst bracket of them all. This one here is not triangulated in any way. Look at this. I think the EVGA card is one of the most sagging cars. I could literally right now if I wanted to just bend that out of the way, and although it does make contact with the cooler, I'll flip this around, Phil.
