Reply 960 of 2246, by Tetrium
- Rank
- l33t++
wrote:wrote:May not be the nices way to stack cards, but they are not made of glass and can stand a little beating. That said, the risk of ripping or damaging high components is possible.
It WILL damage them. I recently acquired a Voodoo 5 which was bent from years of weight on top and had components knocked off. Luckily I was able to pass it onto someone who I hope can fix it.
I was going to mention the flexing. I've got an ASUS GF2 which had some custom s370 HSF bolted onto it, I removed that abominating cooling solution but I think it won't even fit into an AGP slot now...
Especially longer and somewhat more slender expansion cards (like Voodoo 5, but also like VLB cards and other cards that don't have very stiff full-length cooling solutions) are prone to this.
And it may look perfectly fine when putting something else on top of it, but as time passes, a bump here, a slight redistribution of topside weight there, a single stack may even fall over... it may even help in developing loose solder joints or create other problems which may end up in intermittent defects which may be very hard to track down ("It was tested good before I put it on the bottom of that stack?").
I really don't recommend storing this way. The only thing worse is if it's put into a box like that and the box gets moved around.
edit:
I've actually been busy earlier today carving sheets of cardboard, particularly for the purpose of putting in between PCBs so they don't damage eachother when stored together.