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.
Those look like optional expansion ports cut into the case that were filled with plugs 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.
Edit: Downvotes for attempting to answer the question… awesome.
Downvotes for not getting it right, I presume.
Which makes me concerned that the “Hole for Pepnis” answer has so many upvotes.
Although it is a gasket for an optional expansion that wasn’t included - it just appears I was wrong about the type of cable.
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. :)
They are external ports for water cooling. They allow you to run the pipes to an exterior location, and I have never seen anyone use them ever. I would leave the rubber grommet as it generally looks nicer than the hole.
Probably for external radiotors. Outside of the case you can make them bigger and thus more silent.
Radiators? Nah, open loop. One end to the faucet, other end to the drain. If you’re on well water it goes right back down to where it came from.
Built a computer for a guy years ago. Dual titan X, 3 radiators in a little fucking HAF tower. He bought two exterior radiator mounts
Was about to ask what one does with dual Titan Xs, but the obvious answer is whatever the hell one wants.
This is the correct answer - I know because I was there 10000 years ago and had to decide between this and buying a special case from koolance. Amusingly they still sell one for the outside.
They can also be handy if you have to do anything weird like route display cables from the GPU to the motherboard like for a thunderbolt display.
Is water cooling for PC gaming still a thing? It’s been 10+ years since I followed any trends.
Only sort of, it still exists but it’s a lot more compact now. And not super common as far as I know, like the other poster said here air cooling has come a long way. I’ve got a water cooled GTX 1080 Ti in my rig right now, but it’s basically just a couple rubber tubes coming off the GPU leading to a little square radiator that I have a fan bolted to. It all sits inside the case (or, well, it’s intended to… My case isn’t quite large enough for everything I’ve got in it so I’ve got the radiator and fan a little bit jury-rigged to the front of my case right now. No biggie.)
The rubber didn’t agree well on my old case. I poked it a couple years ago trying to figure it what it might be and the little triangles has gotten stiff and snapped off on one side, so I stopped poking it.
I was today years old when I learned what they were for though. I knew it was some kind of tube or pipe or hose, but I’ve spent about 0.3 seconds actually thinking about it so I never figured it out.
Years ago, I saw someone run a copper loop through this newly poured basement foundation just to use to cool his pc silently.
Yeah I remember that post on Reddit. Holy shit my mans literally ran like 1000ft of copper through his ceiling into his house’s plumbing lmao. He also had a WILD monitor setup, was more like a pit than a desk.
Now that I’m home, I can find the post I’m remembering.
oh, no. It’s much older then reddit. It was an old Slashdot post from 2009.
If i could show you the amount of awful 5 gallon bucket, recycled tygon and aquarium equipment “water cooling” loops i used to use for shit, you’d probably piss your pants laughing.
Speaking off cooling and piss, I once saw a streamer experiment with cooling a pc with his piss. Well, I’m saying it was his piss. For ToS reasons, he made it clear he couldn’t say it was his piss. It was ill-conceived and he couldn’t get far enough to actually do a benchmark test.
Just leave them be. I think their point was to route tubing for custom water cooling loops.
Hole for Pepnis
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.
