A little bend where the PCIE connects Sapphire 7970

The first 99% of my Sapphire 7970 is straight as an arrow... At the very end where you plug in the PCIE it dips down a little due to the weight of the power cable. The weight / gravity of the connector is so minimal it's practically non existent but it's enough to get the end of the card to dip.

If I manually raise the wire level with the card, elevating that tiny bit of pressure the card becomes level at the end... As soon as I let the wire go it droops down to it's natural / relaxed position causing the end of the card to droop a few mm's.

After looking at the card there appears to be NO support at the far end... The front and especially the center where the heat sink's located there's plenty in place... Though at the far end that little bit of pressure is enough to pull the card down (ever so slightly.)

Honestly there's nothing I can do... Anywhere I position the power cable there's going to be a little bit of pressure (there's always some tension in the connectors) whether it be pulling down, up or side to side. And given the lack of support at the end of the GPU anyway I position the power cable, that little bit of weight / pressure is going to pull the end of the GPU / PCIE connectors with it.

Is this normal? Anything to be concerned about?

Here's a photo

Why don't you take it back and exchange it for a normal one?

That actually looks pretty bad. But I've had lots of heavy cards do that. I usually end up using something like this

Backplates help with that too.

Albaholic said:

That actually looks pretty bad. But I've had lots of heavy cards do that. I usually end up using something like this

Click to expand...

That's exactly what my 6950 used to look like, until I came up w/a ghetto mod that involved an aftermarket fan, a bolt and two nuts to prop up the fan attached to the video card at the end.

Updated photo... I cleaned up the wiring... The "frame" of the gpu is straight... It's just the board that bends... The inside's hooked to the cage, the center has the heat sink... But the far right has no support! So once I attach the PCIE that litttttle bit of pressure causes it to dip.

The gpu itself runs awesome, no issues... Even if I bought a new one tomorrow i'm sure it'd do the same thing... There's just no support there to keep the *** end up.

Do I have anything to worry about? Google made me feel better... Seems like a lot of people have the same issue. The dip seems to be much less now that i'm using a single PCIE.

I don't see a problem.. this is normal. I especially wouldn't RMA the card as it is not the card's fault it is doing that.

That first picture looked really bad. I would recommend getting a back plate to help add some rigidity to the pcb. My card is perfectly straight and its a 3 slot with a crazy heavy heatsink and dual fans.

How good is the Thermaltake Spinq Vt working out for you? It definitely has a unique design.

magellan said:

How good is the Thermaltake Spinq Vt working out for you? It definitely has a unique design.

Click to expand...

I really like it... It looks awesome and does a great job keeping the CPU cool. (Also very quiet!)