This has been true for a long time - I remember removing GPUs before shipment when working in the VFX industry almost 10 years ago. Usually the mobo slot would

This has been true for a long time - I remember removing GPUs before shipment when working in the VFX industry almost 10 years ago. Usually the mobo slot would break and brick the whole machine - good amount of time the GPU actually survived ! We were also getting tons of AMD and Nvidia workstation cards for free (which were far heavier than their gaming counterparts at the time)