I have a Gigabyte B75M-D3H motherboard, and decided to try upgrading from 1333Mhz RAM to 1600Mhz RAM.

It didn’t work (either because the CPU cant handle it, or the motherboard can’t).

The Gigabyte website said it should work.

So then I looked at the bios version, and I was on version F4, and the latest was F14.

A quick upgrade later, I found the 1600 RAM still didn’t work, so I gave up.

A few days later, my PC started acting strange:

• Sometimes it wouldn’t come out of sleep.
• After it refused to “wake up” even hitting the reset button didn’t seem to make it restart
• At some point I even had to switch off the power at the wall
• A few days later, it got worse: it suddenly refused to start… I tried everything, and it started to look like a motherboard failure (or a bad bios flash)

As a last resort, I decided to find the “clear CMOS” pins (2 metal pins near the row of pins for the front switches and lights)… just remove all power, and short out the 2 pins with a screwdriver (I have a special jumper for shorting it out)… maintain the short for 5 – 10 seconds.

After that, I was relieved that the motherboard finally started working correctly.

Overnight, the PC went into sleep mode, and then resumed normally the next day.

I must remember this for times when it appears the PC is dead due to a motherboard fault! KBYWJ95GCHCQ