Metal vs Plastic standoffs?

Hello all. I recently bought new parts to make my second build, and while I've been waiting for the parts to be shipped in, I've just been reading and reviewing the whole building process, and I noticed something had changed since the last time I built a pc about 8 years ago. Standoffs are metal now? When I built my last rig, plastic standoffs were used that went through the hole and then had arms that extended once through. This made sense to me since plastic isn't a conductor. So why are metal standoffs being used? I feel like it's just a short in the board waiting to happen.

The metal standoffs I have came with my Rosewill Challenger U3, and honestly I don't even understand how they are used. They have a screwlike side and then a long flat side. I don't honestly even know how they are used haha. I'm scared that with these new screwed in standoffs that I will end up tightening the screws too much and cracking my new motherboard . My mobo is going to be an ASrock z68 extreme3 gen3.

Was just confused and hoped someone could explain all this to me!

Any assistance on how to use the rosewill standoffs would be nice as well. The manual that came with the case is a 3 page piece of trash

The stand off are brass and you will screw them in the mounting spots on the cases for the motherboard size that you have (i.e. Mini-ITX, Micro-ATX, ATX and eATX) and then you will mount the with screws through the board to the stand off. The reason for this is the mounting hole are not conductive and you want to keep the board off from the chassic frame so that a solder point wont make contact and ground out the board.

Christian Wood
Intel® Enthusiast Team

I always assumed they were metal to help with grounding out any potential static electricity. I have no idea if this is true or not