[SOLVED] My Motherboard has no CMOS Battery

B450M-Bazooka
So I got this motherboard,, it's new but it was opened before as I had the shop update my BIOS for me. It came without a CMOS Battery, I'm building a new PC and My GPU fans are not working and I get no display. could this be because of the CMOS battery missing?
My GPU has a light next to the PCIE connector, I'm guessing it means that it's recieving the power. I've re-seated my GPU a couple times, no luck.
 
Solution
display may be set to onboard threw bios, lack of battery is most likely not an issue for booting but will be 100% an issue every time you loose power/unplug machine and need to reset all your bios settings such as XMP , RGB settings and so on. id check to make sure the video settings in bios are set to PCIe and not onboard myself

Going to assume the Op has a Ryzen cpu not an Athlon APU. Ryzens don't have igpu, so could not be set for igpu in bios by the shop or they'd totally loose display instantly, requiring cmos reset. Commonly the battery is behind/under the back end of the gpu, requiring gpu removal just to get at the battery.

The pc will pass post, booting to bios in order for the user to reset the RTC (real time...
B450M-Bazooka
So I got this motherboard,, it's new but it was opened before as I had the shop update my BIOS for me. It came without a CMOS Battery, I'm building a new PC and My GPU fans are not working and I get no display. could this be because of the CMOS battery missing?
My GPU has a light next to the PCIE connector, I'm guessing it means that it's recieving the power. I've re-seated my GPU a couple times, no luck.
So a shop did a bios update for you no problem and they said they updated it? If that is the case yes you may just need to go buy the battery
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tioym

Gfost73

Reputable
Mar 23, 2019
520
66
5,090
display may be set to onboard threw bios, lack of battery is most likely not an issue for booting but will be 100% an issue every time you loose power/unplug machine and need to reset all your bios settings such as XMP , RGB settings and so on. id check to make sure the video settings in bios are set to PCIe and not onboard myself
 

Zerk2012

Titan
Ambassador
B450M-Bazooka
So I got this motherboard,, it's new but it was opened before as I had the shop update my BIOS for me. It came without a CMOS Battery, I'm building a new PC and My GPU fans are not working and I get no display. could this be because of the CMOS battery missing?
My GPU has a light next to the PCIE connector, I'm guessing it means that it's recieving the power. I've re-seated my GPU a couple times, no luck.
Put a battery in and go from their.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tioym
display may be set to onboard threw bios, lack of battery is most likely not an issue for booting but will be 100% an issue every time you loose power/unplug machine and need to reset all your bios settings such as XMP , RGB settings and so on. id check to make sure the video settings in bios are set to PCIe and not onboard myself
I'll get the CMOS battery, will probably ask them to give it to me.
I have no display, GPU fans not spinning either so I'm guessing this problem is probably GPU?
 
UPDATE I was troubleshooting and I realised.... Yeah this is gonna be a bit stupid but my RAM doesn't show up in the compatibility tab for the motherboard. I just asked a friend and they told me that the GPU fans should still atleast spin and give some sort of display. I can get the RAM changed no problem but do you think this will fix issue with the GPU?
 
UPDATE I was troubleshooting and I realised.... Yeah this is gonna be a bit stupid but my RAM doesn't show up in the compatibility tab for the motherboard. I just asked a friend and they told me that the GPU fans should still atleast spin and give some sort of display. I can get the RAM changed no problem but do you think this will fix issue with the GPU?
No the gpu should have no issue because the ram
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tioym
UPDATE I was troubleshooting and I realised.... Yeah this is gonna be a bit stupid but my RAM doesn't show up in the compatibility tab for the motherboard. I just asked a friend and they told me that the GPU fans should still atleast spin and give some sort of display. I can get the RAM changed no problem but do you think this will fix issue with the GPU?
I would suspect you arn't plugging the gpu in or faulty gpu
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tioym

Sub Atomic Genius

Prominent
Aug 11, 2020
11
1
515
B450M-Bazooka
So I got this motherboard,, it's new but it was opened before as I had the shop update my BIOS for me. It came without a CMOS Battery, I'm building a new PC and My GPU fans are not working and I get no display. could this be because of the CMOS battery missing?
My GPU has a light next to the PCIE connector, I'm guessing it means that it's recieving the power. I've re-seated my GPU a couple times, no luck.
If you had a shop update the BIOS, they had to put a battery onto the m'board to do it... Why-O-Why would they have NOT left the battery on there?? The machine will never hold any BIOS settings without that battery (??F10 TO "SAVE/EXIT??")... And, if indeed, they gave you your board back, AND charged you & accepted your payment, without that battery in place, then that sounds like FRAUD to me...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tioym

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
display may be set to onboard threw bios, lack of battery is most likely not an issue for booting but will be 100% an issue every time you loose power/unplug machine and need to reset all your bios settings such as XMP , RGB settings and so on. id check to make sure the video settings in bios are set to PCIe and not onboard myself

Going to assume the Op has a Ryzen cpu not an Athlon APU. Ryzens don't have igpu, so could not be set for igpu in bios by the shop or they'd totally loose display instantly, requiring cmos reset. Commonly the battery is behind/under the back end of the gpu, requiring gpu removal just to get at the battery.

The pc will pass post, booting to bios in order for the user to reset the RTC (real time clock) and saving of bios settings, at which point the pc will reset which does not require psu shutdown, and the pc will then finish booting to OS. Upon shutdown , the psu turns 'off' and any saved info in the cmos chipset is lost again.

None of which affects display.

Move the gpu to the second slot. Many times that's required initially just to get the gpu recognised by the bios, for some reason it just doesn't when using the pcie dedicated lanes of the first slot, but works on the pcie shared lanes of the second slot. If it does recognise, you can move it back. Just don't move it back until you have a battery in place.

If you had a shop update the BIOS, they had to put a battery onto the m'board to do it...
Not really. It's a new motherboard. It comes with a battery pre-installed by the manufacturer. The shop should not have had any reason whatsoever to remove the battery for a bios update. There isn't a bios update for any vendor I've ever heard of that requires battery removal. Meaning somebody messed with the bios settings and removed the battery to clear, and someone else thought it was finished, packed it up and returned it. Doesn't mean shady, just incompetent and/or lacking communication skills.
 
Last edited:
Solution
Going to assume the Op has a Ryzen cpu not an Athlon APU. Ryzens don't have igpu, so could not be set for igpu in bios by the shop or they'd totally loose display instantly, requiring cmos reset. Commonly the battery is behind/under the back end of the gpu, requiring gpu removal just to get at the battery.

The pc will pass post, booting to bios in order for the user to reset the RTC (real time clock) and saving of bios settings, at which point the pc will reset which does not require psu shutdown, and the pc will then finish booting to OS. Upon shutdown , the psu turns 'off' and any saved info in the cmos chipset is lost again.

None of which affects display.

Move the gpu to the second slot. Many times that's required initially just to get the gpu recognised by the bios, for some reason it just doesn't when using the pcie dedicated lanes of the first slot, but works on the pcie shared lanes of the second slot. If it does recognise, you can move it back. Just don't move it back until you have a battery in place.


Not really. It's a new motherboard. It comes with a battery pre-installed by the manufacturer. The shop should not have had any reason whatsoever to remove the battery for a bios update. There isn't a bios update for any vendor I've ever heard of that requires battery removal. Meaning somebody messed with the bios settings and removed the battery to clear, and someone else thought it was finished, packed it up and returned it. Doesn't mean shady, just incompetent and/or lacking communication skills.
Okay, Came back from the shop. It was the BIOS, apparently the updated them in bulk and ended up giving me one that they forgot to update by chance. The CMOS battery being removed was also because someone wanted to update the bios but someone else just packed the mobo thinking it was already done.

I built the rest of the PC myself and I did not make any mistakes, in the end it was just the BIOS. 2 days of troubleshooting and the solution was so simple. THANKS EVERYONE FOR THE HELP !
 

david germain

Distinguished
Apr 14, 2013
50
17
18,535
Nice one. just as a side note maybe for the future. if the motherboard does not have memory or GPU it should (maybe newer boards dont) beep giving an error, code. so you can see if the motherboard is actually trying to do something.
then plug in memory - memory error beep go away. but you will get beeps to say GPU is not installed.
this way you can tell if the board is trying to run eg has power and posting. (post - power on self test)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tioym