CMOS battery fails - how common?

[nole1fan]

I have MSI MOBO RS480M2-IL which I bought last year, and it has been working flowlessly.

Since last week, it has been keep loosing clock sync, and I have tried several time to sync manually with NTP without any success. I was able to sync up the clock one time, and it ran good for little while.

Over the weekend, it did sync fine, but it reset the clock back to 2004 even PC was powered on, and I was browsing.

How common is to have the CMOS battery fails? Last night, I was rebooting PC, and it Award BIOS indicated that battery has failed during boot-up process.

What are the typical symptoms of the battery issue? Last few days, my video has been also flickering everytime I tried to open something on PC. I wonder if these are all symptoms of the bad battery or mobo?

Rob

 

[furballi]

Remove the CMOS lithium battery and check the voltage. CR2032 should be above 2.5VDC. Radio Shack sell replacement battery for under $4.

 

[nole1fan]

Thanks. How common is though? What are the typical symptoms? It appears that simple battery should not be able to cause instability.

I was using car analogy that as long as car is running, weak battery should not impact the performance of the car.

rob

 

[Peter]

It needs to be above 3.0V actually. Some RTC/CMOS chips are more twitchy than others.

Yes of course "empty" battery is a common thing. These aren't rechargeables, y'know, and battery charges aren't infinite.

Slow clock and then loss of BIOS settings are the common symptoms. You've seen them

 

[TheSophist]

A failing CMOS battery is very common. You will most likely find these with older motherboards, but I rarely see them with new ones. Since your system is over a year, it is very possible your battery is at the end of life. Just replace it, it is not something to worry about.

In terms of the CMOS battery causing instability, I highly doubt it. If your video is flickering, then I suggest making sure your video cable is plugged in tight; if the problem still occurs, then try reseating your videocard. Report back after you have tried the three steps.


TheSophsit

 

[George Powell]

I have seen a failing cmos battery cause all sorts of problems with a system, for some reason windows 98 back in its day could get very confused if it didn't have a consistent clock. My dad's PC a while ago lost about 6 hours a day as a result of the cmos battery. New battery has sorted out the system for about 4 years now.

 

[nole1fan]

Well, it is true that newer socket 939 based system still relies on $3.85 battery for the performance. I swapped out the battery yesterday, and quite a few problem which I used to run in has gone away.

Video flickering is still an issue, but I am investigating drivers and stuff. Thanks again for all your help.

 

[bfonnes]

I'd say the life of those batteries is about 5 years... typical watch battery is what they are,

edit: typical symptoms are like they said above; losing cmos settings, and having a clock that is always 1-1-1980 12 am when you turn on your comp... kinda like a 12 o'clock flasher (inside tech joke).

BFonnes

 

[furballi]

Lithium cell...good for at least 6 to 7 years.

 

[bfonnes]

Originally posted by: furballi
Lithium cell...good for at least 6 to 7 years.

ya, lithium cells last longer than your typical non-lithium (alkaline), but the OP didn't say anything about his battery being a lithium cell.

 

[furballi]

It should be lithium cell.

 

[nyker96]

happened to me once 2 years ago on a KT266A, just replace it and all the CMOS setting and clock will be up again. Mine was also a CR2032 lithium battery.

 

[nycdude]

I heard that there was issue with them on MSI K8N Neo4 Plat boards. If you check their website forum. There seem to be an issue. I am not sure if its a bad batch of boards or something more. MSI seems to be hush hush about them and accepting RMA for them.

I wanted to get one of these borads but I am now hesitant to pull the trigger for one.

Thoughts.