mohterboard: amd socket am2 abit nf-m2s case: raidmax altas
As other people have said, you might have inserted the connector onto the wrong pins, or have a loose fitting connection. Download the manual for your motherboard, and triple check that you have the connectors on the right pins.
Is it possible to insert the pins in the wrong way?
They are switches, which are more or less interrupted pieces of wire. Just as you can swap the ends of a plain wire and it will still conduct electricity, your switches can also have their ends swapped, and still work perfectly.
I got this problem after switching to a new case, everthing worked fine with my old case
On newer cases, there is often an intermediate "jumper" between the switches and the connector on the motherboard. This is there for both safety (in case you quickly pull your case apart and forget to disconnect that) and convenience (so you can leave the bottom part of the wire on the mobo while taking it out). Double check the entire length of the wire between the switch and the mobo connector, and see that you haven't disconnected such a jumper.
If all else fails
First, if you have a way of electrically determining that the switches work (like a logic probe), then I'd go with that.
If your switches are fine, and you are worried you have a defective motherboard, you can actually test out the power and reset switches by shorting them with a normal jumper. This is mostly just an option for the reset switch, as the power switch often has a split/extra pin between its connectors, and a normal jumper would not work.
Simply remove the jumper connectors for the switch, place a standard jumper over the connectors, and plug in/turn on power.
Ideally you'd do this while the computer was turned on, but I cannot recommend you do that, as it is dangerous. Instead, I suggest you do such a test with the computer off to begin with; just like connecting any other jumper.
