main thing is I'm wondering why they had to remove the system monitor option when the fan connectors still have connected traces for the rpm sense wire.

could be nice if I could see the fan rpms in bios anyhow.
thanks

if you do not have that option you have a later board without the hardware monitor chip and a Celeron chip installed. See if you have a W83781D chip somewhere on the board.when hardware monitor W83781D is not stuffed and Celeron CPU is installed.