Surely you have not stopped to think about it, but surely you know that all PC graphics cards have an elongated shape . It is something as natural for hardware fans as a hard drive is rectangular, but do you know why they are like that and not, for example, square? In this article we are going to tell you everything.
Many of the form factors of PC components are shaped by inheritance. To give a very clear example, SSDs in 2.5-inch format are like this to “respect” the shape of mechanical hard drives of the same size, and to be able to be installed in the same spaces either in a laptop or in the holes intended for this in PC cases. However, unlike a hard drive, an SSD would not have to have that form factor and, in fact, could even be circular if manufacturers wanted.
With graphics cards, more or less the same thing happens, but with some nuances that we will see below.
The PCIe socket is what determines the shape of the graphics cards
Actually both the PCI-Express socket and the box. We all know what a PCIe socket looks like, with its elongated shape and the hole in which we insert, among other things, the graphics cards.
Only with that will you be aware of why the graphics card must be elongated, since we have to literally insert it into this elongated socket. However, that is not all, since in the case of graphics cards we must also anchor them (generally with screws) to the PC case, and since the PCIe socket is not completely glued to the end of the motherboard but there is some separation , the manufacturer has to make it even longer so that it reaches the edge of the box, so that we can screw it in and that the video output ports “pop out” so that we can connect the monitors there.
So much so that even when we have low-profile or really very short graphics cards (even those in ITX format), there is also a minimum in terms of their length, so that the graphics must reach at least from the anchor to the box to the end of the PCI-Express port.
The third reason why the shape of graphics cards is the way it is and not otherwise has to do, again, with PC cases, and is that as a general rule they have a maximum width and since the graphics are They install “lying down” because the motherboards are installed vertically, it causes the height of the graphics cards to have a maximum. It is true that there are graphs taller than others, just as it is true that some graphs do not fit in all the boxes on the market. There is no standard in this regard or even a convention, but manufacturers are aware of this and that is why they do not make graphics cards in other ways.
What is more or less standardized is the layout of the graphics card: it has a necessarily rectangular and elongated PCB, with the video outputs on the right side, the PCIe connector at the bottom, and the power sockets (if it has them ) either to the right or above the PCB. In this one, the GPU is mounted normally either in the center or in the center pulling to the left – it depends on the size – and it is surrounded by the VRAM chips, since they have to be as close as possible to reduce latency. Thus, the right area is the one that remains to install the VRM and other components of the set that makes up a graphics card.
So, if you have ever wondered why graphics cards have an elongated shape, you now know.