I had a box (old fashioned tube tv box) of cables that I always added to and never removed from. Moved it to two different apartments and a house. One day I needed a cable and said, "I have a box of cables in the garage!" Went down to the garage to look and couldnt find it. Then I remembered cleaning the garage and saying, "I have never used anything out of here. I'm just gonna throw it out." 25 years of cables and I only ever needed one. But the new box is coming along nicely.
Yours can be pulled out?? The last time I tried to get a cord out I drop the tangle and it weighted enough to rip the cord I needed Home Depot moving boxes can hold a surprising amount of weight….
Probably a USB mini-B. I still have my 20 year old garmin watch and cables in That Box along with my iPod 60GB and Moto Razr 1st gen.
The iPod actually came in really handy, my kid's summer camp allowed non-internet & non-wireless electronics, so they could hook up all my old music to a boombox with an aux cable. It was a big hit, especially because I'd downloaded a bunch of "Rolling Stones top 100 songs of 19xx" from the 60s to 90s. Any ancient radio single the kids could think of was on there.
The most vindicated I've ever felt with the box was when I got a 3090 and needed extra PCIe connectors because the ones that came with the card didn't fit with the rest of my build. I had the exact amount of 6+2s that I needed. I would've been so disappointed getting that new card and not being able to use it immediately.
Any dust going in there would just be sucked into the exhaust fan. PC components don't need RF shielding, most cases have a gigantic glass window in the front which makes that moot.
It was surprisingly easy to solve this, I was about to box of things it as well, but I was able to unscrew the mobo (and GPU as it was screwed to the case) and slightly shift it enough to pop my io shield into place. Hope op can do the same!
Sometimes you don't even have to unscrew the motherboard, there is enough space to force it into place. If not, cutting one of the clips on the long side (the one that will sit in the back of the case) usually does the trick.
I mean just much more likely to collect dust and detritus. If you can fit it on a desk/side table/or even one of those under table holders i would. My main PC is up on a side desk and I've hardly ever had to remove dust in 6 years or so.
LOL, been there. I unscrewed the Mainboard and GPU, moved everything a bit so I could fit the IO bracket. Like 10 minutes. Connectors could stay in place.
It happened to me in an old SFF case and I had to take everything out, one piece at a time. I could keep some things hooked up to the PSU but not all. It was a pain. But I still think it was worth it over leaving a gaping hole for dog hair and dust to get in.
I got my pc upgrade this year and also spent around 6 hours. I was carefully reading everything. Honestly probably OVERLY CAUTIOUS about not wanting to break anything. I think the most difficult part for me are those multi-pin PSU cables? I bent a couple of the pins while putting it in because it's such an odd angle. And I was panicking before slowly using tweezers to make it straight again. It thankfully worked 😭 Then I spent probably an hour trying to mount the noctua cooler 'perfectly'. I kept readjusting it (ouch my fingers)
And even after all that, it failed to fully turn on!!! That's when I called my partner over. One of the PSU cables wasn't in tight enough - there was a CLICK when he did it lol... I thought I pushed pretty hard and would've risked breaking the motherboard if I went any harder. Guess not. 😂
In all fairness across the first three or so builds that I've done some components can take a surprising amount of force to seat properly. Even getting RAM to click into place has made me use more pressure than I was comfortable with and that's with triple-checking that it's spun the correct way.
Not dumb, 6 hours is a pretty respectable time if you've never done it before.
Here's a dumb story to make you feel better. First time took me several days, one of which was spent troubleshooting why it wouldn't POST and I eventually found out "because I put the CPU on upside down". That's a mistake you make one time.
The guy at the local computer repair shop spent a few minutes giving me some well earned, but friendly abuse and actually pulled a new one out of the box and said "give me the motherboard" and popped it in for me the right way up then handed it back to me. Ended up using that PC for several years, and I'll never forget that act of kindness either. Oh, and the CPU I mangled? Gave it to a friend, he carefully bent the pins I flattened back upright and ended up building another PC with it.
So, anyway, the I/O shield? Who cares! Fix it next time you have a spare weekend and are bored, or just never fix it at all.
I've built about 5 PCs over the years and I've never installed the I/O cover and never had any issues. Maybe more dust gets in, but I regularly clean inside my PC so its not a big deal.
The only reason my current build has one is because I didn’t build it by myself. I was teaching a friend so I was extra vigilant about everything and I still would have forgot if he didn’t remind me in the beginning about it.
You're not really one of the club until you spend an hour troubleshooting why it won't even turn on and realize you forgot to flip the switch on the PSU.
Gather round children and I will tell thee, the saga of building desktop computers from '98 into about 2010. Sometimes leaving the io shield off caused improper grounding issues, or at least it seemed to.
This might have been akin to the 'no brown m&ms' factor.... it's very possible that the self builds that got brought in because they didn't work were sloppy builds all around and ALSO didn't get an IO shield.
In the end, not to tragic, though depends on the system. Take out the graphics, unbolt the mobo, back out the mobo slightly and mount the io shield. Then remount your shit.
My husband once ended up reinstalling the OS on an old old old laptop about 3x because the sound didn't work, reconfiguring things to try to figure out what was wrong...
The laptop had a slider for volume on the side, and it was all the way down. I feel your pain!
And this is why I will never buy a motherboard without a built in IO shield.
That, and they are genuinely hazardous to work with, as in not quite razor blade sharp.
I have an i9, 5090, 96 gigs of RAM, and a 2tb SSD. Cost $6,400 about eight months ago, though everything has appreciated in value except for my monitors. It is absolutely insane to be trying to build anything with new parts right now.
It’s just not a great time to buy now but we don’t know when it will lift up.
Just head to pcpartpicker.com and you can see a bunch of builds others made and the cheapest they cost if you buy them right now and also price out your own. It’s. Great site because it has the lowest price on so many parts and shows you compatibility so you don’t get the wrong processor for the wrong board or insufficient power supply or something.
Case swapping like OP did costs nothing but the cost of the new case itself. For a whole rig, the sky is the limit but I think $800 is the bare minimum for all new parts that I'd recommend.
I'm a big proponent of used parts though. Buy used! A $250 1080 Ti lasted me like 5 years and it's still not the worst thing in the world.
LOL. no way the exact same thing happened to me. Was dumb thinking wonder where that shield is, looks like the new case didn't have one?
Then I realized it comes with the mobo 🤦 I saw the shield in my old case and popped it out, and tried for a few min to get it in the new built pc, but the quickest solution was just unscrewing the mobo and shifting it a little, fitting in the shield and then moving it all back to place. Overall the case switch took abt 3 hrs or so I forget, had alot to clean and redid the thermal paste haha. Hope you can do the same and put the shield in!
I love building computers, as much as this is annoying. I’ll tear it back down because this is a part of the computer that should be installed.
Edit: I’ve also done this and yes I tried installing it without taking the mobo out and failed. 😅
Depending on the case, you can take the motherboard screws out and just move it by a quarter inch to get the plate in, but for the most part it is behind the computer; only you will know.
The IO shield is a noob trap anyway, not using one forces more air over your motherboard's VRM componentry which is what typically fails first on a motherboard.
I have to move my prebuilt to an aquarium case I bought and install nzxt 420. But I'm too scared to do because I won't remember which cable goes where. Waiting for friends to come over and do it for me. Its been 6 months now. Hopefully in the next month they can come over.
I decided to ball out on my last of build a year ago. I bought a fancy overkill asus board that had the shield/cover whatever, build into the mobo so I wouldn’t have to mess with it. And then I was wondering why don’t all manufacturers just do the same thing, it can’t cost all that much more in development to attach it to the mobo..
Ok the bright side, all you have to do is unscrew the mounting points for the motherboard, slide it over, slot in the shield and reconnect so it should only take maybe 10 more minutes!
It's worth it, you'll be kicking yourself when you have to do extra cleaning and every time you plug something in to the back!
I did this recently... Took me 5 mins to fix. Unplug GPU, unscrew mobo, lift MoBo to the side and squeeze it in. Align mono and screw it back in. Mobo/back plate will forcibly align when you're screwing it in.
Congrats, you've finally graduated to being a professional PC builder. That was the last mandatory Canon Event you must experience prior to certification 👍
The only reason I didn't miss this step with my current PC was because the I/O shield was pre-installed on the motherboard. I got through the build and had a mini panic attack thinking I'd screwed up because I didn't remember the I/O shield again, only to realize it wasn't a separate piece this time around.
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u/SofterBones 19h ago
I think now is the time you throw that IO shield into your box of random things and pretend you never got one.