Weird connector on mainboard

[Misel22]

I got this little ITX board for my wife's next build and noticed this weird connector that I haven't seen before.

The board is an AsRock A520ITX/ac and the connector left to the "AsRock" logo is neither labeled and nor mentioned in the manual (booklet and online!).

 

There are two RGB connectors further right on the board (addressable and non-addressable). So I don't think it's that. But since I have no idea what this is for, I cannot be sure.

 

So, any ideas? Have you seen that before?

[mariushm]

Could be some header to measure voltages (ex cpu voltage, ram voltage etc) ... maybe they make a b550 itx version of that board with overclocking features and kept the header on this a520 mobo.

[YoungBlade]

I've never seen that before, and my best online searching skills for the last 20 minutes have turned up nothing.

 

My best guess, if I had to make a guess, is that it's a proprietary header used by Asrock for flashing BIOS or the like. However, I can't find any other Asrock boards that have that same header, including their other AMD 500 series ITX boards.

 

I look forward to seeing if anyone else can shed some light on this.

[Darknighterror]

I know that there are some weird Asrock motherboards with a molex port on it, to power devices you put in a pcie slot that aren't able to be powered by the slot itself. I have no idea how they should look, but maybe thats one of them?

[Poinkachu]

Kinda looks like a variation of Molex Picoblade SMT version.
Dunno for what though

 

[Misel22]

 

11 hours ago, mariushm said:

Could be some header to measure voltages (ex cpu voltage, ram voltage etc) ... maybe they make a b550 itx version of that board with overclocking features and kept the header on this a520 mobo.

You're right. There's a B550 version of that board and a friend on one of my discords and I noticed that the product image of this and the https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B550M-ITXac/index.asp are practically identical. The only differences are the label and the PCIe retention mechanism. Even the BIOS battery cabling is in the same place.

 

11 hours ago, Darknighterror said:

I know that there are some weird Asrock motherboards with a molex port on it, to power devices you put in a pcie slot that aren't able to be powered by the slot itself. I have no idea how they should look, but maybe thats one of them?

It's too small for that much power.

10 hours ago, Poinkachu said:

Kinda looks like a variation of Molex Picoblade SMT version.
Dunno for what though

 

Yeah, that looks about right. But what it's for stays a mystery.

[Poinkachu]

8 minutes ago, Misel22 said:

 

You're right. There's a B550 version of that board and a friend on one of my discords and I noticed that the product image of this and the https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B550M-ITXac/index.asp are practically identical. The only differences are the label and the PCIe retention mechanism. Even the BIOS battery cabling is in the same place.

 

It's too small for that much power.

Yeah, that looks about right. But what it's for stays a mystery.

Well, maybe it serves the same purpose (or partly a remnant of) old asrock motherboard for troubleshooting or something.
To provide extra power to PCI-E lane for overclocking. This one closer to RAM, so maybe for ram ? idk.
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/4-pin-molex-connectors-on-asrock-boards.2176095/

https://www.eteknix.com/asrock-fatal1ty-h97-review/2/

[Misel22]

Here's a picture of the entire board. The connector is left to the "AsRock" logo. IMHO It's too small to provide a significant amount of power to anything.