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?

  • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months 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.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
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    3 months 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.)

      • taiyang@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        The Nocturne did me well, recently got the boxier one though since video cards are getting out of hand. Love NZXT though!

  • bonn2@lemm.ee
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    3 months 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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        3 months ago

        Such as?

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

        • DerisionConsulting@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          3 months 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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          3 months 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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          3 months 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
              0·
              3 months 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.

        • const_void@lemmy.ml
          0·
          3 months 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.

      • jalkasieni@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        3 months 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.

  • sanpo@sopuli.xyz
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    3 months ago

    Just leave them be. I think their point was to route tubing for custom water cooling loops.

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    Those look like optional expansion ports cut into the case that were filled with plug because the configuration didn’t need them. The shape I’d really odd though since the only thing that comes to mind is that they were intended for additional power cables - the shape is weird.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
      0·
      3 months ago

      Downvotes for not getting it right, I presume.

      Which makes me concerned that the “Hole for Pepnis” answer has so many upvotes.

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        3 months ago

        Although it is a gasket for an optional expansion that wasn’t included - it just appears I was wrong about the type of cable.

        • FaceDeer@fedia.io
          0·
          3 months ago

          Being slightly wrong means more of an endorphin rush when people realize they can pounce on the flaw they’ve spotted, I guess.

          Don’t sweat downvotes, they’re especially meaningless on the Fediverse. I happen to like a number of applications for AI technology and cryptocurrency, so I’ve certainly collected quite a few of those and I’m still doing okay. :)

          • warm@kbin.earth
            0·
            3 months ago

            I imagine downvoting incorrect answers being pretty useful in this type of community, it’s nothing personal and as you said, it doesn’t mean anything. Though just not upvoting would be sufficient.

    • Wahots@pawb.social
      0·
      3 months ago

      They are for watercooling, but you are right that people don’t need them. OEMs just add some holes or a random reservoir mount and then bill a case as Watercooling Ready™️, even if it has like, space for one 120x15mm rad, lol.

  • lungdart@lemmy.ca
    0·
    3 months ago

    Those are rubber grommets. They’ll protect cables from wearing on metal that pass through the case.

    Likely for things with hard wired controllers, like fan controllers or led lighting. You can hang the controller outside of the case in the back where nobody will see it.

  • DontTakeMySky@lemmy.world
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    3 months 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.

  • kamen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Besides the water cooling that’s already mentioned, those could be used for example for routing an internal device out and into the I/O of the motherboard. An example would be some fan/RGB controllers that are meant to be somewhere inside the case, but are terminated with a standard USB A plug (and very few motherboards have that as an internal connector). Another example is a mini display that you could put inside the case that would need to interface with the GPU (so you’d need to route a DP or HDMI cable out of the case and into the back of the GPU).