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How often do you replace the RTC battery?

S

ScottishCaptain

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 4, 2008
871
474
This might be a really stupid question, but how often should you replace the CR2032 RTC battery on the Mac Pro logic board?

I'm more or less just curious, having seen my own fair share of rotting batteries from older hardware (68k/386/486 systems) over the years. I've never seen a CR2032 fail badly enough to eat through the PCB, but I have seen them go pretty weird and damage the socket on occasion.

I tried asking Apple this question and all I got was a variety of questions including "Do you mean a UPS?" and "Are you sure you're not talking about a Macbook Pro?". Not very assuring considering the nMP has one too on the I/O backplane.

Should one replace these batteries every 3-4 years? Every year? Whenever the RTC starts to fail? Or are they guaranteed for something stupid like 10 years?

-SC
 
They generally last 10+ years. I have some old 1990's computers with their original batteries still ticking away at the time, even after being unplugged for over a decade.
 
Perhaps you could replace the battery every X-Year as a regular maintenance? Why wait for a $1 item to fail on your $ x,xxx system?
 
ScottishCaptain said:
This might be a really stupid question, but how often should you replace the CR2032 RTC battery on the Mac Pro logic board?

I'm more or less just curious, having seen my own fair share of rotting batteries from older hardware (68k/386/486 systems) over the years. I've never seen a CR2032 fail badly enough to eat through the PCB, but I have seen them go pretty weird and damage the socket on occasion.

I tried asking Apple this question and all I got was a variety of questions including "Do you mean a UPS?" and "Are you sure you're not talking about a Macbook Pro?". Not very assuring considering the nMP has one too on the I/O backplane.

Should one replace these batteries every 3-4 years? Every year? Whenever the RTC starts to fail? Or are they guaranteed for something stupid like 10 years?

-SC
Click to expand...

I think this is a good question and nothing wrong in asking. I spoke to an Apple tech guy about the lifespan of the battery. He said whenever you turn on your Mac Pro and a message keeps appearing saying that your Mac Pro settings has been reset to factory settings, that would be the time to replace the battery. He is not sure about how many years do these batteries last. It's sometimes tough when you need answers and some Apple technicians are not updated with their knowledge on Macs.
 
Also don't forget that if you have the machine plugged into an active AC mains line, the battery isn't used. The Mac will use the trickle power from the power supply to keep the time. Further increasing the lifespan of the clock battery.
 
I replaced the batteries in 2 x 2007 iMacs

when I replaced failing HD"s with SSD's.
So it appears they last quite a while.
 
Intell said:
Also don't forget that if you have the machine plugged into an active AC mains line, the battery isn't used. The Mac will use the trickle power from the power supply to keep the time. Further increasing the lifespan of the clock battery.
Click to expand...
This is also a good reason not to use a power strip to turn your computer on/off; PCs as well as Macs. Leave the strip (or better, UPS!) powered on all the time, and only use the computer's power button. Otherwise, the RTC battery will die out faster.
 
WMD said:
This is also a good reason not to use a power strip to turn your computer on/off; PCs as well as Macs. Leave the strip (or better, UPS!) powered on all the time, and only use the computer's power button. Otherwise, the RTC battery will die out faster.
Click to expand...

The reason is rather moot as the computer will be replaced long before the coin battery dies.
 
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