How to find the motherboard LEDs

[Lilija]

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My computer has a Gigabyte EX58A-UD3R rev2 motherboard. I looked in to its motherboard hardware peripherals and I found that there are nearly 50 LEDs, they are grouped around 5 to 6. The Gigabyte’s windows utility used these LED to account CP/NB/DRAM/SB loading, frequencies, voltages and temperatures. In those both frequency and voltage LEDs works in windows and Linux and also in BIOS, memtest etc. so I can assume that they are directly related to Hardware and controlled by it. There is no such software control or interface. Whereas the Gigabyte DES2 utility (Dynamic Energy Saver 2) drives the temperature and load LEDs, so it means it must be controlled by a software. Now I want to just know that is there us any way of snooping for these LEDs? This means some kind of reverse reverse engineering the DES2 utility. So anyone have idea of where should I start searching the solution?

[Christina 80]

While using the computer many people doesn’t want to see their motherboard. They run their computers with a cabinet or box so that they can secure the hardware peripherals and to invisible the LEDs. So is there any issue with your motherboard leds or you simply want to play with them? In Linux if you really need to monitor the Hardware parts then why shouldn’t you go for the good monitoring utility? There is one good utility called GKrellm which is really made for UNIX and Linux like systems. With this you can monitor CPU Speed, network activity, temperature of core, main board and GPU, and main memory.

[Chakradev]

I don’t have much knowledge about the main boards. I know that in earl days the LEDs used especially for post code errors on the mother board. These are coupled through the Hardware or software to the BIOS. These LEDs will report the user when any part of the system goes wrong or malfunctioned. The 8 LEDs will stop blinking at the 8 bit code if the start up fails. All light will went out when there is no problem. It defines that the BIOS or PC now load the OS successfully. Now in current generation boards it is still being used for post error detection. These post codes are located in BIOS ROM. But I don’t have any idea about how to get and read those codes. Just look in the flash memory of your board.

[Galbraith]

As you may know that the LEDs are used to show the processor/DRAM/NB/SB volatages and temperatures along with their frequencies and loading. The two sets of LEDs are depends on OS (voltage and frequency). They will power up whenever the system started booting in Windows, Linux, BIOS etc. The other group of temperature and loading LEDs will only blink when system will run the DES utility. So I think they are merely related to the software interface. With monitoring the DES utility plays with LED and system power LED too. In Linux I think it can be controlled by some thing. Also in some extent you can control the voltages and Bclk.

[MaggieK]

As I mentioned with some Hardware technician and they quote me that the Motherboard LEDs is definitely controlled by the Hardware itself on the board not the OS because the OS are independent. The LEDs Blink when they find any fault in the system like unable to boot OS. The GES utility is mainly used under Windows OS to monitor the motherboard or the system status. It is not directly connected or controlled to the LED.

[Amma-Watson]

The LEDs are very useful in windowed cases. The monitoring feature with these LEDs are very useful for overclockers. The BIOS drives the frequency and voltage LEDs. Other than this there is a single and separate post LED. The board that formed as a multilayer so it becomes not easy as you think to find the traces. The windows utility is mostly written in MS Visual C++ Studio, some in C#. So I think you should leave it alone.