Check your battery

[Mint8]

Just finished my 3rd PC and ran into a problem that I thought might be useful if I mention it to people just starting out...

My brand new motherboard came complete - with a flat CMOS battery. The symptoms were that i kept loading into the "first" bios screen as if it was the first time I had switched it on. The XMP setting would not stay on and the system clock kept going back to 1/1 and time 00.00.

After some panicking about it being a hardware fault etc I realised these were all indicating a faulty/dead battery - which I didnt realise could actually be a thing on a brand new board - a bit of research told me that its actually fairly common..

Did mean I had to take the GPU back out and lift a heatsink to get at the battery but could have been worse as I was on the verge of pulling memory etc and RMA,ing stuff.

 

[InkZ]

Those things last for years, I've only ever had to replace them on really old machines, how the hell that happen lol.

 

[mark 11:11]

Those things last for years, I've only ever had to replace them on really old machines, how the hell that happen lol.

possibly the bath tub principle...............
if a battery has "survived" the manufacturing process [wording deliberately incorrectly chosen for comedic value] ie not died immediately or in fact just not worked due to manufacturing defect,
which obviously happens in a small number of parts when mass producing something.
then its now in that well it works so now itl run till it runs out like a normal battery
then you get the higher failure rate again at the end because.... well its a battery they dont last forever lol

 

[InkZ]

possibly the bath tub principle...............
if a battery has "survived" the manufacturing process [wording deliberately incorrectly chosen for comedic value] ie not died immediately or in fact just not worked due to manufacturing defect,
which obviously happens in a small number of parts when mass producing something.
then its now in that well it works so now itl run till it runs out like a normal battery
then you get the higher failure rate again at the end because.... well its a battery they dont last forever lol

makes sense