EK debuts vertical GPU mounting bracket

EK Waterblocks has cooked up a new bracket for vertical mounting of your video card. EK-Loop Vertical GPU Holder promises better stability by being made of thicker materials as well as using two ATX motherboard mounting points for additional security.

The vertical mounting bracket requires a case with an open PCIe expansion slot design and a minimum of six free slots. Furthermore, it can only be used with video cards with a single or dual-slot PCIe bracket design (the height of the GPU cooler itself is not important). The product is offered via the EK webshop for 64.90EUR.

EK®, the leading computer cooling solutions provider, is introducing a very special vertical GPU mounting bracket. The EK-Loop Vertical GPU Holder stands out for the way it uses two ATX motherboard mounting points to additionally secure the graphics card. This unique holder is not just implementing patent-pending technologies, but also thicker materials than other similar solutions available on the market.

Displaying your liquid-cooled graphics card or even the standard massive air cooler is something that has become more and more popular over the years. One way to do this is to use the special aftermarket brackets that allow mounting the GPU vertically if the case is not already equipped with vertical PCIe slots. However, the user is often facing issues with how these solutions work since they don’t offer enough support, allowing the GPU to move around. Things can be even more challenging when dealing with liquid cooling and installing fittings and tubing to a vertically placed GPU, not to mention trying to ship a PC with a vertically mounted GPU.

Fortunately, EK has come up with a unique, patent-pending approach that eliminates all of these problems that can be potentially fatal for expensive hardware. The EK-Loop Vertical GPU Holder allows the graphics card to be vertically mounted in any ATX PC case that has an open-style rear PCIe I/O slot layout. The vertical GPU mount is made of 1.5mm thick, black-coated steel to provide excellent structural rigidity. Additionally, it uses two motherboard screw standoffs to get two additional points of contact and stability, ensuring no sagging and no horizontal movement of the GPU. Before the bracket is installed at the ATX mounting points, two plastic standoffs are placed to protect the motherboard and also to allow the bracket to be installed even onto motherboards that have intricate and complex aesthetical covers.

The premium-quality gen 3.0 PCI-E riser cable is 200mm long, allowing for plenty of leeways when the GPU is being mounted.

EK-Loop Vertical GPU Holder can be mounted on cases with open PCI-E expansion slot design, with a minimum of 6 free slots. The GPU has to be either a 1- or 2-slot design in terms of the I/O shield. The height of the GPU cooler is irrelevant to the bracket compatibility.

EK will also be releasing a second version of the vertical GPU bracket that will be compatible with cases that do not have an open rear PCIe I/O slot layout. Up until this point, the cases that have horizontal bars between PCI-E expansion slots required modding and cutting to be able to fit a vertical GPU bracket. The product that solves this problem is the EK-Loop Vertical GPU Holder – Shifted, which indicates that the entire bracket is moved forward to allow additional space for the display cable to be plugged in. Each Shifted version will be delivered with a special angled 1.8-meter long Display Port cable that is DP 1.4 compatible.