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?

Edit: thanks for all the replies, so just for water cooling I have no need for.

  • bonn2@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year 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
        0·
        1 year 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
          0·
          1 year 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.

        • BCsven@lemmy.ca
          0·
          1 year 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·
              1 year 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.

        • DerisionConsulting@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          1 year 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
          0·
          1 year 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.

      • jalkasieni@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        1 year 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.

  • lungdart@lemmy.ca
    0·
    1 year 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.

  • Wahots@pawb.social
    0·
    1 year 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.

  • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year 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.

  • badbytes@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year 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
    0·
    1 year 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.)