Motherboard/Ram Problems

Bussinateur · February 22, 2015

Okay so the strangest thing happened today.

I was opening up the side panel of my computer looking for extra fan slots on my motherboard. ( ASUS P8H77-PRO )

I found a 3 pin connector that said "CHASSIS" and I thought that it meant Chassis Fan. So I plugged my fan in with my computer running and... the whole computer shut off. I tried powering it on again but it wouldn't boot. I searched online and found that it might be a reset or clear CMOS switch (and not a fan connector).

So I shorted the first two pins to start up my pc and within a while everything was back to normal. I could boot into Windows and all my files were intact. Or so I thought.

I pressed restart inside Windows to make sure everything was working properly, and it just shut down. I didn't know what the issue was again.

Later I found out that my BIOS and Windows detected half my RAM available. 8 GB out of 16. I downloaded CPU-Z but it recognized all 4 dimm slots (4 x 4GB). I tried running MEM86 and it worked fine for a while but then it shut off my computer during Test #7.

Can someone please help? This has never happened to me before.

Thanks

aahrg · February 22, 2015

check your motherboard manual for what the chassis pins actually do.

I think it might be for a chassis entry detection. some cases have connectors that detect when the case is opened and shuts off the computer. If this is the case you might have to clear a warning inside the bios somewhere.

DavidHawk62 · February 22, 2015

According to your motherboard manual from the ASUS website it looks like you're right it's supposed to clear CMOS. I'd turn everything off, remove all the RAM and then put them back in and see if it all gets detected in the BIOS this time. Hopefully there wasn't any sort of damage done when the fan was connected.