Predator G3-710 CMOS Battery Terminal Broken

acomputerguy

Hi all,

My desktop stopped being able to boot properly and after doing a lot of troubleshooting I was told to try changing the CMOS battery. That ended up being incredibly difficult as the battery refused to "pop" out, no matter how much finesse I used on the latch with a variety of different tools. I was eventually able to force the battery out and replace it with a new one but am still having the same issue of my BIOS not being configured properly. 

My unit is unfortunately out of warranty and I'm wondering what's a good way to address this. Is it very difficult to replace the CMOS battery terminal? Will it cost much to have Acer repair it? Can I throw another mobo in there instead?

Thanks in advance.

billsey

Yeah, they obviously don't want to deal with it... Here is the board layout:

#26 is the socket, and it likely has two pins that go through the motherboard and are soldered in. What a technician needs to do is remove the MB, flip it over and heat them up to suck the solder out of those two holes. Then they put a new socket in place and solder it back in. It'll take longer to pull the MB out than to do the fix... I could see $100 though, since that all does take time. Maybe you know someone who's enough of an electronics dweeb to have the tools and the interest?

billsey

The CMOS battery socket is really standard, any decent technician with minimal soldering skills should be able to replace it for you.

Now, what specifically have you been seeing in the way of errors that made you think the CMOS battery was bad? The G3-710 models are just old enough that some might be having the battery going dead, but not many since the batteries typically last 7-10 years.

acomputerguy

billsey said:

The CMOS battery socket is really standard, any decent technician with minimal soldering skills should be able to replace it for you.

Now, what specifically have you been seeing in the way of errors that made you think the CMOS battery was bad? The G3-710 models are just old enough that some might be having the battery going dead, but not many since the batteries typically last 7-10 years.

Thank you. I contacted a local computer shop who said it would cost $200-300 to repair. I'll keep asking around.

Honestly I got some bad tech advice that said to change the battery and it seems that terminal was broken to begin with (the latch didn't work), so me forcing the battery out broke the whole thing.

billsey

Yeah, they obviously don't want to deal with it... Here is the board layout:

#26 is the socket, and it likely has two pins that go through the motherboard and are soldered in. What a technician needs to do is remove the MB, flip it over and heat them up to suck the solder out of those two holes. Then they put a new socket in place and solder it back in. It'll take longer to pull the MB out than to do the fix... I could see $100 though, since that all does take time. Maybe you know someone who's enough of an electronics dweeb to have the tools and the interest?

acomputerguy

billsey said:

Yeah, they obviously don't want to deal with it... Here is the board layout:

#26 is the socket, and it likely has two pins that go through the motherboard and are soldered in. What a technician needs to do is remove the MB, flip it over and heat them up to suck the solder out of those two holes. Then they put a new socket in place and solder it back in. It'll take longer to pull the MB out than to do the fix... I could see $100 though, since that all does take time. Maybe you know someone who's enough of an electronics dweeb to have the tools and the interest?

Thank you! That's a big help. I'll ask around.