What are the rubber circles for on the back of my pc case? Should I just leave them like that if don’t have a need for them? Or are they likely to let I’m dust into the motherboard?

  • badbytes@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    It’s for safety, to protect any unexpected insertions, you first want to wrap parts in rubber. Otherwise you get a virus.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Is that an NZXT? It looks almost exactly like my old case I just repurposed. (And yes, it’s for water cooling but those cases have exceptional air cooling so it was never that important.)

  • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Well, you got the answers you were looking for, here is a different answer. To your other implied question, how to not worry about dust getting in other holes.

    Main thing is to develop positive air pressure. You want more powered intake than powered exhaust.

    Use fans for all your filtered air intakes, ignore powered air exhaust, run it at lower fan speeds if you can. Air will get out fine. If you force the air in where you want it to go in, dust will only go into the easily removable filters, it won’t be on your components. Any extra hole in the case will just be exhausting the already filtered air. Then just remember to actually check and clean your filters. That’s the hard part. But if you clean them when they need to be cleaned, you will never have to actually clean the inside or the fans or components or anything else, just the filters.

  • bonn2@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    It is probably an old case design. In the early water cooling days, there would be separate watercooling units that sat outside the case. The grommets were so you could pass your tubing through.

    I wouldn’t really worry about the dust tbh, you will wind up having to clean it regardless.

      • Reddfugee42@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Such as?

        Edit: I mean you can contrive something if you’re MacGyver but there’s no remotely standard use case for that.

        • const_void@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          Anything that doesn’t have an external connector or some way to mount one. One example would be if you were using a USB Wi-Fi radio and wanted to connect it to the internal USB connectors but you’d need to pass the antenna to the outside of the case.

        • DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          There were some old PCI cards that were very badly designed, and they required things plugged into them from inside the case, or they needed to plug into things on the motherboard. I had card that controlled Cold cathode tube lighting that could also connect to audio to sync to the music that worked that way

          But, the actual answer is that the grommets are for old-school water-cooling.

        • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          Such as sata cables for quickly hot plugging hard drives you are testing/inspecting/cataloguing and don’t want to open the whole case between each drive, or leave the case open.

        • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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          1 day ago

          Mine has an 3 position exrernal fan switch for manual control, cable comes out those holes. Also useful for direct header usb that you run an extender cable out to another device.

            • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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              1 day ago

              While that is an option for anyone, its not something I wanted. Mine is cube with 200mm fan. The lowest setting is fine for the thermals, but if I’m video processing I will toggle to high, but for voice over or a phone call comes in I drop it down low. The random up and down of the fan if left to its own device creates a noise I don’t want to deal with.

      • jalkasieni@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        Specifically, these are for being able to pass in the tubing when your computer overheats playing Counter-Strike 1.5 so you pull apart your 50cc moped so you can bolt the moped radiator to the side of the case since it doesn’t fit inside. At least that’s the only use I’ve actually seen in practice.

  • Wahots@pawb.social
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    2 days ago

    Watercooling holes. That said, I’ve never seen anyone use them. Mounting external rads is a bitch. They take up space. Most people just buy a watercooling compatible case.

  • DontTakeMySky@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Dust will get in pretty much no matter what you do. I wouldn’t worry about it. If you live in an already really dusty environment then get some sections of filter and attach them inside of these holes but honestly I wouldn’t worry.

    It’s for water cooling loops if you want to mount the rad or pump or something outside of the case. I think it was more common in the early days of water cooling when things were less standardized.