Question Cmos battery died in my old pc and now died again in my new pc that has all new parts besides the case! What could be causing this?

Mar 19, 2023
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My pc had never had a problem for almost 2 years. After going home for spring break and leaving it off, I came back to find no display when it booted and it would not boot past dram. I did everything I could and it still would not boot. I finally took out the Cmos battery and put a new one in and it worked. This happened again about 4 months later. I completely upgraded my pc with all new parts besides the case! I bought all the parts brand new. I have been using this pc for almost 3 months with no problem. I went home for spring break and came back to my pc doing the same thing as my old one. It could not boot past dram and there was obviously no display. From experience, the first thing I did was removed the CMOS battery in my motherboard and put a new one in and sure enough, it booted. Again, I have bought all new parts besides the case for my pc. New power supply, new ram, new CPU, new motherboard! I am not sure what is causing this! My next solution is to buy a new case because I'm not sure if the case could be affecting this problem. Does anyone has any ideas what could be causing this problem???
 
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Ralston18

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Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

= = = =

Where are the CMOS batteries being purchased? Did you buy a pack of them?

CMOS battery: brand, source?

May be a batch of defective and/or counterfeit batteries.
 
Mar 19, 2023
5
1
10
Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

= = = =

Where are the CMOS batteries being purchased? Did you buy a pack of them?

CMOS battery: brand, source?

May be a batch of defective and/or counterfeit batteries.

Cmos batteries were just energizers but the same exact one that came in my motherboard when I bought it new. Just do not know how this could happen to my old pc and now my new one with all new parts besides case!
I have a 13th gen intel i5-13600k cpu, 3080 evga, asus prime Z690, Ram corsair vengeance ddr5 2x16s, icue h115i elite capellix cooler, windows 64 bit
 

Ralston18

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CMOS batteries are commonly CR2032.

Asus link:

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1005740/

And if you bought a pack of Energizers that is no guarantee that the batteries therein are actually good quality. Either with respect to materials and/or manufacturing. Likely little or no QA in any case.

Where the problem has occured on two different systems with the battery (batteries) being the only constant then the batteries themselves are suspect.

General reference:

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1040820/

Check the specific User Guide/Manuals for the pc's involved.

The only other thing I can think of for the moment is that some connection (in both the old and new pc) has been made in a manner that drains the batteries.

That would be "you" as a common factor. Some error of omission or commission - possibly caused by poor documentation or some other misunderstanding.

Refer to the respective (old pc and new pc) motherboard's User Guide/Manual to double check all connections. Pay close attention to pins, voltages, and polarities. Check jumpers especially.

Be wary of any cables that were moved from old pc to new pc.

There may be other ideas and suggestions.

Hopefully it is only a batch of bad batteries.
 
Mar 19, 2023
5
1
10
CMOS batteries are commonly CR2032.

Asus link:

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1005740/

And if you bought a pack of Energizers that is no guarantee that the batteries therein are actually good quality. Either with respect to materials and/or manufacturing. Likely little or no QA in any case.

Where the problem has occured on two different systems with the battery (batteries) being the only constant then the batteries themselves are suspect.

General reference:

https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1040820/

Check the specific User Guide/Manuals for the pc's involved.

The only other thing I can think of for the moment is that some connection (in both the old and new pc) has been made in a manner that drains the batteries.

That would be "you" as a common factor. Some error of omission or commission - possibly caused by poor documentation or some other misunderstanding.

Refer to the respective (old pc and new pc) motherboard's User Guide/Manual to double check all connections. Pay close attention to pins, voltages, and polarities. Check jumpers especially.

Be wary of any cables that were moved from old pc to new pc.

There may be other ideas and suggestions.

Hopefully it is only a batch of bad batteries.


I see what your saying. I don't believe there is anything wrong with the batteries because the one that died was the one that came with the motherboard when I bought it new. I am currently wondering if my cases lighting for some reason could be pulling from the CMOS battery or if for some reason my SSD is pulling from it but I have never heard of that happening. These are the only two things that I have not upgraded.
 

BrokenRT

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Dec 19, 2011
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I had same thing going on with one of my PCs. It’s an old Gigabyte AMD system. At least a 8 year old board.
Every few weeks if I turned my system completely off when we left town I’d come back to a dead cmos battery. After around the 3rd time I finally broke out the voltage meter and tested the battery and sure enough the battery just low enough. I wound up just keeping a twin pack of batteries on hand. Around 2 months after the last change my main SSD failed to boot windows one day after turning my system off. After I replaced the SSD it never did it again.
I never got to the bottom of it. How any of that could of correlated or if it was just coincidental but it’s never done it again and it’s been turned off completely at least 30 times since without an issue. I’ve been building my own PCs since 2001 as well as bought a few and have never experienced this issue on any of them old and currently using.
 

Ralston18

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If the LED is designed to stay on and stays on when the computer is unplugged and otherwise deprived of outside power sources then the CMOS battery is the likely power source.

With the net result that the LED remaining lit drains the battery.

Which specific LED?

This motherboard?

https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/...ME_Z690-P_D4_UM_WEB.pdf?model=prime z690-p d4

[Do verify that I found the applicable User Manual.]

First, check the status of the CLR CMOS jumper per Page 1-16

Second, check the LED(s) per Page 1-19. Confirm that all connections are correct.

= = = =

I am not sure how the SSD could be involved as suggested in the previous post. However, the SSD should certainly to be considered based on the described circumstances. Leave nothing to chance.

Swap in another SSD if at all possible - determine if the battery draining stops. Just as a matter of elimination if anything.
 

Karadjgne

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Nope, the only thing that stays on is the LEDs for the motherboard but that is what that brand is supposed to do!
Shutdown isn't Power-Off. If the pc remains plugged in, it's not being powered by the battery, it's powered by the psu which remains in Standby Mode, so has a constant 5v for USB, power switch, motherboard leds, bios etc.

The Only time the battery is engaged is if you unplug the psu, that's full Power-Off status, no leds should remain lit, no power other than battery to supply bios.
 
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Mar 19, 2023
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Shutdown isn't Power-Off. If the pc remains plugged in, it's not being powered by the battery, it's powered by the psu which remains in Standby Mode, so has a constant 5v for USB, power switch, motherboard leds, bios etc.

The Only time the battery is engaged is if you unplug the psu, that's full Power-Off status, no leds should remain lit, no power other than battery to supply bios.
Correct! When I unplug my power supply, the motherboard side lights do turn off because they are not drawing from the cmos battery. So I do not believe the motherboard lights could be the problem.
 

Karadjgne

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There's generally only 3 things that would cause the need for replacement of a cmos battery because the cmos requires so little energy to stay active, it's barely more than the natural drain batteries suffer when not plugged into anything.
  1. It's old, and depleted. I'm talking 6 years or older type old.
  2. False battery. This can be an actual knock-off that looks like a recognised brand, but really isn't or can be a returned and resold dead battery via RMA etc. Basically junk from the start.
  3. Vampiric drain. There are occasions where motherboard switches are or go bad. The battery is not supposed to engage until the motherboard recognises a power off, which takes a few seconds for the capacitors to drain, even with an instant off like pulling the plug or power outage. If the switch is bad, it can be bad open where the battery is actually good but doesn't connect or bad closed where the battery is stuck engaged, even with power on.

It's extremely hard to diagnose exactly why a battery goes dead in weeks vs years, repeatedly, without a) guaranteeing it was a good battery to start with (buy one in person from a drug store, not online, Amazon etc) and b) being able to verify the actual functionality of the motherboard, whether the switches are working correctly and stuff like the leds are in fact powered by the psu and not the battery.