If the graphics card gets too heavy, Dark Obelisk should prove itself as a savior in need.
Nvidia’s new flagship card RTX 4090 is a single superlative: highest performance, highest price, highest power consumption – and depending on the card probably also the highest weight.
For example, Galax presented a real colossus with the RTX 4090 Serious Gaming. Three 102mm fans (plus a fourth, optional fan), eight heat pipes and a huge vapor chamber for cooling. As a 3.5 slot card, the whole thing occupies three of your PCIe connections and could even be too heavy without support to simply be installed in the computer via the slot.
The hero of the hour: Dark Obelisk
In order to prevent the graphics card installed horizontally in the computer from sinking, Galax includes a so-called support stick with the RTX 4090 Serious Gaming. As an additional pillar, it should ensure that the map always remains horizontal.
Galax is not the first manufacturer to use a graphics card support. PNY, for example, had already released a bracket for Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series that stabilizes the graphics card.
What is new, however, is that the inconspicuous support becomes its own lifestyle product. Because Galax doesn’t just call its mount Support Stick or Support Bracket. No, the pillar answers to the mighty name Dark Obelisk
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And that’s exactly what the support stick looks like: Like a black obelisk that rises from the depths of the computer in RGB light to free the graphics card from the burden of gravity.
Galax Dark Obelisk next to the optional fan of the RTX 4090 Serious Gaming.
Is this simple tool becoming the next accessory that players can use to personalize their computers even more? That probably depends on how well first steps like the Dark Obelisk are accepted.
However, it is possible that hardware manufacturers will soon try to outdo each other when designing their support sticks. Especially when graphics cards continue to get bigger and heavier and brackets are needed outside of the flagship class.
In addition to the first designer mount, the RTX 4000 also features DLSS 3.0 upscaling technology. An Nvidia employee recently explained why they are not available for older graphics cards.
more on the subject
Nvidia DLSS 3.0 only for RTX 4000: Here’s why
Graphics card mounts: A necessary evil
The fact that there are products like the Dark Obelisk on the market at all has to do with a simple fact: graphics cards have become increasingly bulky in recent years.
While even the largest RTX 2080 Ti still managed with three PCIe slots, the Zotac RTX 3090 Ti PGF OC, the first quad-slot model, appeared in April 2022, for which the previous maximum was no longer sufficient.
Now we can already see the release of the RTX 4090 custom cards, which also require four PCIe slots.
The reason for this is the ever-growing heat sinks that manufacturers are putting on the map. Because the growing power consumption of the newer cards also ensures that the GPU heats up steadily and needs to be intercepted.
And since a large proportion of these heatsinks are made of metals such as aluminum and copper, the weight of the cards continues to increase as well. The solution: mounts like the Dark Obelisk from Galax.
You want to know more about the new graphics cards from Nvidia? Then have a look at our extensive collection article about RTX 4090 and Co.
RTX 4000 presented: Everything about specs, release, prices and performance
Would you build the Dark Obelisk into your computer? Will graphics card mounts become the next design element in computer construction? And what do you think of the trend towards bigger and bigger cards? Write us your opinion in the comments!
