Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: ASUS adds, then removes, the ability to detect sagging in its latest
ROG Astral GPUs

Date: Thu, 01 May 2025 13:45:08 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/computing/asus-adds-...

Anyone rocking a recent-gen high-end GPU like an RTX 4090 or 5090 knows that
these behemoths of rendering power are heavy enough to knock out a would-be
PC thief. As GPUs get larger and heavier, sagging has become a growing
concern for PC builders and GPU manufacturers, and ASUS briefly let on just
how aware of this issue the company is.

ASUS quietly added a function called ΓÇ£Equipment Installation CheckΓÇ¥ to
its GPU Tweak III monitoring software back in January. Included in this
toolset was a measurement named ΓÇ£VGA Horizontal StatusΓÇ¥ that precisely
measured the angle at which the installed GPU was tilting down. Users could
set a custom warning if the GPU tilted down beyond a degree threshold set by
the user.

In mid-April, Taiwanese publication UNIKOΓÇÖs Hardware published a teardown
of the latest ROG Astral 50-series cards, which highlights what they suspect
to be a Bosch Sensortec chip. Bosch describes it as ΓÇ£a general purpose, low-
power IMU that combines precise acceleration and angular rate (gyroscopic)
measurement with intelligent on-chip motion-triggered interrupt features.ΓÇ¥
The technicians at UNIKOΓÇÖs Hardware believe this chip is what powers the
tilting detection tool.

Curiously, the most recent mentions of this feature on ASUS forums point out
that as of the latest release of the Tweak III software, dated April 11, the
Equipment Installation Check button is no longer there. Users had begun
reporting what they believed to be false positives, confident that their GPUs
were level despite the software saying they were sagging. Engadget reached
out to ASUS to understand if this feature is being deprecated or if it
wasnΓÇÖt reporting accurate readings but did not receive a response.

Whether the feature is gone for good or angling for a comeback, the risk of
sagging GPUs is all too real for many PC gamers today. PCIe slots were not
exactly designed with todayΓÇÖs six-plus GPUs in mind, which has led to
gamers finding creative solutions to hold up their enormous graphics cards
and prevent potential damage.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/computing/asus-adds-...
detect-sagging-in-its-latest-rog-astral-gpus-134508930.html?src=rss

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