I have a PC with a Ryzen 7 8700F, a Radeon 7700XT, and 32 GB of DDR5 5600 RAM. It was running smoothly until I noticed that the RAM was defaulting to 5200 instead of its rated 5600 speed. I went into the BIOS, enabled EXPO, and set the DRAM frequency to DDR5 5600. However, now my CPU and RAM lights are on, and I'm unsure what to do next. I've tried shorting the CMOS reset pins for 20 seconds with the PC unplugged. I also don't know how to remove the CMOS battery as it seems to have some sticky tape on it. My hardware setup includes an ASRock B650M-CX motherboard. After reseating the RAM, pulling the CMOS battery for five minutes, using the CMOS reset pins, and reflashing the BIOS, everything lights up and all the fans spin, but my keyboard isn't getting power. Could I have damaged the CPU or motherboard?
1 Answer
I don't think your PC is bricked. It sounds like there might be an issue with the RAM settings being unstable. Try this: unplug your PC, take out the RAM, remove the CMOS battery (it might be tricky, so be careful), and hold the power button for a few minutes. After that, put everything back together but skip enabling EXPO this time.
I'm having trouble removing the CMOS battery since it seems glued down. I did a BIOS flashback, but it didn’t fix the problem.