MSI NEO-LSR no USB header for front connection. Missing or not included???

[donfm]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum but here goes. I just received an MSI 875P NEO-LSR MOBO from Googlegear. In the specs it says 6 rear USB connections and 2 front on the motherboard for a total of 8 USB ports. Problem is the front 2 USB ports are supposed to go to header JUSB3. The 2 extra optional rear ports go to JUSB2 according to the manual.
Here's the kicker there is no JUSB3. The header is missing and never soldered on the board. Does this model come with the JUSB3 header or is that an option on the NEO-FIS2R board only. The specs do not specify it just says 8 USB ports for this board. It appears you can use the 2 optional front OR rear ports but not both but the spec says 8 total ports.

The board comes with a PCI bracket that has 4 diagnostic green LEDs on it and 2 USB ports. If you connect the cable for the 2 bracketed USB rear ports then there is no place to plug in the front 2 ports in my case. Anybody have this board and tell me if you have the JUSB3 header on it. Tech support at Googlegear was useless and MSI is unreachable.

One more thing. My Antec Truepower 430 supply has small a 3 pin plug with one blue and one black wire on the 2 outside sockets. The Antec Case manual says it is a "fan signal connector". I don't have a clue where this connects on the NEO-LSR board and the Antec manual for my 1080AMG case is vague at best. I checked the MSI manual and it appears that connector "SF1" is for fan monitoring but the pinouts don't appear to match. The motherboard appears to use 2 adjacent pins of the connector and the power supply uses the two outside pins. Any help here?

 

[mechBgon]

The two-wire lead from the Antec power supply sends the RPM signal of the 92mm bottom fan, in case you want to monitor it. Problem is 1) it turns slowly enough that many mobos couldn't read it anyway, and 2) most people need their fan headers to actually power fans, not throw them away on monitoring fans that are already getting power elsewhere I do wish mobos would come with about seven or eight fan headers...

As for the board, I downloaded the manual, and on page 2-27 it says that JUSB3 is "optional," which I figured probably meant that it comes with the FISR2 model but not the LSR. Reality check using Newegg's "See It" photos blows that theory out of the water, however... neither version has the JUSB3 header in their photos.

So evidently there are some with this header, but don't count on it. The case wiring may not be well-done enough to accomodate full USB 2.0 speeds anyway, so you might be best off just using the rear ports if you can get away with it. Hope that helps a little...

 

[donfm]

I answered my own question on the usb headers. There are actually 6 usb ports on the board itself which come out the back. There is one header JUSB2 on this particular board. It can be used for 2 optional USB ports either on the front of the case or with the rear bracket that comes with the board itself. So you can have 6 in the back or 8 in the back. The other option is to have 6 ports in the back and 2 in the front. Sorry I'm such a retard. The fan connector thing still has me confused however. Is the "FS1" header on the board for fan sensing or fan power as you mentioned and how does the cable with the blue and black small gauge wire coming from the power supply connect, and to where?

 

[mechBgon]

I'm seeing three fan headers in the diagram on page 1-4. There is CFAN1 for the CPU heatsink's fan, SFAN1 at the right edge for a system fan, and NBFAN1 for the motherboard's northbridge.

If you want to monitor the power supply's bottom fan, you can plug the black/blue wire into SFAN1. If you don't want to monitor the PSU's bottom fan, it's ok to just bundle that black/blue wire somewhere out of the way, and not plug it into anything. The power supply's fan will behave the same either way, so it's your call.

Personally, I would want to use the SFAN1 header to power one or two low-drain 80mm case fans, instead of using it to monitor the power supply's RPM (if the board can even read RPMs that low).