TIFU by clearing CMOS while the PC was ON

Hardware & Gaming PC Builds, Modding & Overclocking
,
1

I have a x299 based system with 8 memory channels.

(B1 | B2 | A1 | A2 | | C2 | C1 | D2 | D1 )

The board runs in :

  1. single channel mode with C1 only.
  2. dual channel with A1 || C1 only
  3. quad channel with B1 | A1 || C1 | D1 only
  4. and also quad channel mode with all channels populated

Last night while removing a usb drive, I accidentally pressed clear CMOS while the system was ON. The system rebooted and I got “init ramdisk : Alloc magic is broken at 0x4e9d4470” warning in proxmox.

Upon troubleshooting I’ve realised that A1 and A2 memory channels are not working the way they should. The system does recognise RAM in all channels but memtest gives the following error:

IMG_1870
IMG_18701920×1021 644 KB

I’m fairly confident it happened yesterday because I run memory test periodically and it passed on Dec 25th 2025.

Next, removing the memory modules from channel A1 and A2, while keeping other 6 channels populated also passes the mem test

So my question is:

  1. Is it possible to repair the A1 and A2 channels of motherboard?
  2. I’ve ruled out the faulty RAM because same module works in different channel. But is this a sufficient condition to arrive at this conclusion?
  3. Lastly, I can still live with 192GB RAM if two channels are corrupted, but would anyone know if it’d still run in quad channel mode with 6 channels populated? Need as much memory bandwidth as possible.

Attaching the mobo data sheet. Any help would be much appreciated, TIA!!

2

You should try re flashing your BIOS , seems like you corrupted it somehow.

2 Likes
3

I’ll try and update here. But do you know if clearing CMOS can cause electrical failures as well? Something that can’t be solved by BIOS reset?

4

Man that totally did it. I was overthinking so much. Unfortunately the corrupt BIOS also took about 2 weeks of work with it, but that’s certainly better than replacing a PC in this timeline. Thank you so much again!

IMG_1878
IMG_18781920×1049 376 KB

4 Likes
2–4 hrs pre-buy PC test: what to run?
5

can i dplease ask you are you using windows 11 for this config , and what application you use u need this much of ram ?/

6

Check his thead on LLM for that

You will know his RAM hoard :money_mouth_face:

1 Like