On Thu, 4/9/2026 11:18 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote:
I bought an MSI Raptor Lake mobo, as I got a CPU for free.
I only used it for a few weeks over 2 years and it wouldn't
boot. Remove graphics card, RAM and disk drive, still
nothing. Put power supply on tester it is fine.
Then find the CMOS battery has only 0,3 volts!
Piss weak it goes flat in that time.
I have older PCs (Kaby Lake) still going without skipping a beat
For new-old stock, the CMOS battery in a motherboard can
be running that whole time and draining. For example, on
my 4930K system, the motherboard was the last one in town
and the battery had two years of wear on it. The calculated
lifetime of a CR2032 is a little bit shy of three years,
which means not a lot of life is left.
<=======> 2.9 years at 10ua # Motherboard ships, with CR2032 in its socket.
<=======> 2.9 years at 10ua # You store the PC in a closet, no mains power
<============================> # Ten years is the shelf life of a CR2032 (in its plastic package)
<============================> # A PC in soft-off state, with +5VSB present, consumes no CR2032
The lifetime then, depends on the situation. And new-old stock
is a thing. My motherboard for example, was pretty obscure,
not a lot shipped, the stock in town ? Came from the first 40 foot
container sent to North America. and that's how you end up with
two years burned off the unpowered-lifetime of the motherboard battery.
You should be able to find the EverReady CR2032 datasheet, take the mAh
rating of the battery, divide by 10uA, and from that, get the more
precise figure on the "less than 3 year" value. What is pretty amazing,
is the number of CR2032 products that all behave the same. There can be
more variation between alkaline batteries than that. For all of its
faults, the CR2032 is still a relatively amazing product, for the
amount of chemicals inside it.
Apple solved this problem, by having a "giant" cell in their desktop
machine. You hardly ever have to worry about it (the retired machine
is flat). But when you price a spare cell to take its place, it's
quite expensive, and relatively speaking you are no further ahead.
We started with Dallas Semi chips for time keeping, where the cell
was buried in dark epoxy plastic. And the only way to do a battery
swap on those, was to Dremel your way inside them. Be thankful
the replacement of the CR2032 is almost convenient now.
Paul
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