ASUS X870E Proart has unusual headers.
ASUS X870E Proart has unusual headers.
I've completed a long-overdue upgrade to AM5 and spotted some unusual headers on my motherboard that aren't listed in the manual. One is marked LPC_Debug near the bottom, right by the SATA ports—clearly some debug functionality. Another is hidden just above the top M.2 slot, and a third sits near the bottom PCIe connector, right above the 5V RGB headers. I'm trying to figure out why these are there and how they affect my setup, especially since I can't seem to locate the buzzer. I'm wondering if headers have disappeared entirely and how I can confirm my PC boots correctly without the beep.
You might just wait and check if an image appears on the display. Or if you're impatient, examine the debug LEDs. It looks like that header was removed, because when issues arise it provides more details than those four LEDs (though the data differs). Still, you have them. For a $500 board aimed at professionals, the absence of a 7-segment display for debugging would be a serious oversight. Regarding these headers, undocumented ones are typical on boards, particularly ASUS models. They usually remain from the development stage. For example, the LPC_Debug header could theoretically show a seven-segment readout with the right expansion card, assuming it wasn't disabled. The other headers are likely I2C-related, but without clear documentation or much multimeter work, you probably won't uncover their details.
I was mostly joking with how I phrased that, but I do still find the little beep reassuring when turning on my PC. But it really rules out this MoBo EVER going into a PFsense build in the future, the boot AND shutdown beeps for PFsense are so much fun, plus hearing a beep when I log in is nice too. Thanks for the info on the headers though, I was MOSTLY just curious, unless one of them happened to be a buzzer connection I'm waiting on my SSD to arrive and already updated the BIOS and everything so I'm kind of killing time
the one below the pcie slot no clue since its unmarked and theres already an lpc debug and spi header former of which is the only really useful one nowadays the lpc debug header is for postcodes, just look up "mini pc analyzer" and thats one of those lpc cards or atleast the cheapest one you can buy, otherwise someones made a postcode out of a raspi but was too lazy to actually implement a 7 segment so ill have to go complete it before i go reccomending raspis for postcodes and probably add functionality for the newer uart based headers the unmarked header next to the socket that has a chip beside it is the spi header and the chip beside that header is your bios chip, you can use an external flasher like the ch341a to flash your bios chip but thats kinda redundant now that most boards have usb flashback with the only leftover usecase being crossflashing but idk why youd want to do that on a board thats completely irrelevant for overclocking all those headers are using 2mm pitch so youll have to find or make jumpers with 2mm pitch to use them and really the only useful one is the lpc debug so youll know exactly what the board is doing for troubleshooting and its especially handy for overclocking particularly ram oc though the troubleshooting alone justifies it