Replacing CMOS battery

[Weezy]

If I pull the battery to replace it, will this reset all of my settings? Will it help if I replace it within a specific amount of time, like within 10 seconds?

[A1200]

5 minutes ago, Weezy said:

If I pull the battery to replace it, will this reset all of my settings? Will it help if I replace it within a specific amount of time, like within 10 seconds?

If you keep the PSU powered up (not PC tuned on, just PSU switched on at the wall) it should be providing power to the motherboard and allow you to swap the battery without loss of settings.

[Weezy]

2 minutes ago, A1200 said:

If you keep the PSU powered up (not PC tuned on, just PSU switched on at the wall) it should be providing power to the motherboard and allow you to swap the battery without loss of settings.

I wondered about that, but being a noob, i was concerned about getting under the hood while the PC was connected to power. Thanks for the answer, appreciate it

[HQuan]

An average time for the mobo to reset every settings without CMOS and PSU is around 4-10 minutes. But sometime might be faster. If you have "cmosresetphobia" (fear of your CMOS battery reset everything on your mobo) then you can borrow your friends. When you pull the battery out, your friends will pull another in quick fast.

[xAcid9]

Just save your BIOS setting and load it back after. 
If you going to do it while connected to wall, make sure you don't drop the battery onto the mainboard components and risk frying something.

[mariushm]

It's not like you have a huge list of changes made in the BIOS... also a lot of bioses now have option of saving the changes as a "preset" you can then load back. 

 

For most users it's just the defaults, enabling xmp, maybe setting boot drive or boot priority, maybe setting a custom fan curve and that's about all.

 

If the computer still receives 5v stand-by from power supply  (so even if power supply is off, but not unplugged or switched off using the power switch in the back), the time and cmos settings will be kept with power from that 5v stand-by line, which means you can replace the battery without loss of data. 

Replacing the battery is easy, on most sockets you just press on a clip on the side and the battery pops out. I just use a flathead screwdriver to press between that metal bit and the battery. 

 

Without power from power supply's 5v stand-by circuit, settings should be lost within a few seconds, after the battery removal.

 

Just now, xAcid9 said:

Just save your BIOS setting and load it back after. 
If you going to do it while connected to wall, make sure you don't drop the battery onto the mainboard components and risk frying something.

The battery is 3v and very low current ability, basically a few mA of continuous current... it's practically impossible to "fry" anything with a CR2032 battery. 

 

[Weezy]

Appreciate everyone's input. As I mentioned, I'm a noob, so every bit of information is helpful