[SOLVED] BIOS Battery

[thamesside]

I changed the BIOS battery in October 21 as the time was wrong when I booted up. Just after Christmas it happened again so I thought I'd bought some dodgy Amazon batteries, so replaced it again with Duracell ones. Two days ago I noticed the time was wrong again, went into the BIOS too and that was wrong.

Can anyone tell me what may be happening as they're only lasting a few months, at best.

Thanks Simon

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

We're going to need a little more information from your end. When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list them like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:

Often times when you have a grounding issue, it can discharge the CMOS battery or that the battery is/was fine all along, the BIOS (and/or the chip) on your motherboard is corrupt. Might want to check and see what your BIOS version is at the time of writing. Age of the PSU in your build?

 

[thamesside]

Apologies. Age of PSU about 8 years. Never had a problem with the PC ever, it was custom made but the last 3 battery changes have all been only a few months inbetween.

AMD A8-7670K Radeon R7, 10 Compute Cores 4C+6G 3.60 GHz
32.0 GB RAM
64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Windows 10
Radeon(TM) RX 460 Graphics
BIOSBIOS Date: 01/11/16 22:13:16 Ver: 04.06.05 ManufacturerAmerican Megatrends Inc.
AMD A8-7670K Radeon R7, 10 Compute Cores 4C+6G

3 Drives 2-SSD 1-SATA
OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.19044 Build 19044
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name DESKTOP-QP5U38P
System Type x64-based PC
Processor AMD A8-7670K Radeon R7, 10 Compute Cores 4C+6G, 3600 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. P1.80, 11/01/2016
SMBIOS Version 2.8
BIOS Mode Legacy
BaseBoard Manufacturer ASRock
BaseBoard Product FM2A88M Extreme4+ R2.0

 

[Karadjgne]

The bios battery is only used when the psu is actually Off. That only happens when there's 0 power to the psu (power outages, unplugged, turned the switch off on the power strip etc). Otherwise, the psu is always on. You get power fed to the bios and usb ports etc. A pc that's 'off' means that the Bios/OS isn't running.

The psu can be the cause of dead batteries. If it's not feeding power to the bios, the battery kicks in, and it's not exactly rechargeable.

But it should last longer than a couple months, I've had pc's unplugged for 6 months with no ill affects. So as @Lutfij said, there's got to be a drain on the battery somewhere, and thats usually to do with the motherboard itself, the switch to activate/deactivate the battery is stuck closed, so the battery is constantly used, and often at odds with power supplied by the psu.

 

[thamesside]

I use the PC at night here in the UK. Between 12mn and 4am only. The rest of the time it is turned off at the plug completely. I bought a battery tester. I tested the new battery that I just installed and it was correct. The one I removed was the one that was constantly having to have the clock reset as the time was wrong, this battery was displaying 2.4v.

I am going to leave the PC plugged in but off to see if this rectifies it. Thanks for replying, much appreciated.

 

[Karadjgne]

Motherboard batteries are almost always a CR2032, and should be 3.0v. If the old one was 2.4v, definitely bunk.

 

[thamesside]

Super, thank you Karadjgne