GIGABYTE X570 AORUS XTREME CMOS BATTERY REPLACEMENT

GIGABYTE X570 AORUS XTREME CMOS Battery Replacement

More Work Than Expected

If your computer does not boot anymore because your BIOS settings always get reset, then maybe your CMOS battery is empty. You can check the state of the CMOS battery in Windows, for example with the open source software Open Hardware Monitor.

Search for VBAT (voltage of battery). If a VBAT sensor shows a low value, then the CR2032 battery is probably empty. A healthy value should be around 3V since CR2032 batteries deliver 3 Volt.

The X570 AORUS XTREME REV. 1.0 has two temperature/fan controller chips, the ITE IT8688E and the ITE IT879XE. That’s why you will find two VBAT sensor values for this board. Both measure the voltage of the same battery, however, the value could be slightly different due to precision issues.

How To Replace the Battery

You might think, replacing a CMOS battery should be easy on a ~700€ mainboard that has won an iF Design and a Reddot Design award. Far from it! Especially if your PC is already fully assembled and connected to peripherals.

When it comes to the CMOS battery, the design of the mainboard is an embarrassing failure and Gigabyte should be ashamed. Spoiler: You have to disassemble EVERYTHING. But enough talking, here are the steps!

1. Locate the battery

Remove the graphics card from the PCIe slot and everything that covers the M.2 slots. You should end up with a metal plate/heatsink without any screws and you should see the edges of the battery below the heatsink.

Now you might wonder, how the f*** can I remove this last heatsink? There are no screws so what is the trick? Maybe some mechanism unlocks it? Well, enjoy the ride!

2. Remove the backplate

Yep! You have to remove the backplate if you want to remove this last heatsink! Isn’t that wonderful? However, for just replacing the battery you could also try a potential shortcut which I will explain later.

So remove the board, turn it around and remove the 11 screws. I recommend putting them in the same pattern on a table since they have different sizes.

Note that there is some rubber between the backplate and the board. In my case it was a bit sticky when pulling the backplate off but it was NOT glued together so it should be easily removable.

3. Screw off the plate that covers the battery

Remove these two screws and the standoff in the middle (which also acts as screw).

You should now be able to remove the final plate/heatsink and you should see the three holes where the two screws and the standoff were holding the plate.

4. Replace the battery

Finally you have access to the battery and can replace it! Thank you Gigabyte for letting customers of your 700€ motherboard waste lifetime. We love to unplug our PCs, detach peripherals and disassemble everything. Just to replace a battery! Design awards well-deserved!

5. Verify the new battery works

Now that you have replaced the battery you might want to check the VBAT sensor values again. As I said, a healthy value should be around 3V.

Potential shortcut

There is a potential shortcut. You still have to remove the mainboard but you might be able to skip the backplate removal. First, remove ONLY this screw near the center of the backplate.

This will unloose the heatsink only on the side near the battery because this particular screw not only holds the backplate, but also the heatsink on the front. As you can see, the screw goes through the hole near the battery.

Now you could try to gently lift the heatsink a bit on that side but be careful to not break anything on the other side where the heatsink is still locked! You might be able to lift it a few centimeters.

Then put something between the heatsink and the mainboard to keep it lifted, for example a small spacer between the flat surface (above the yellow circle) and the heatsink. That might give you enough space to replace the battery but it could be tricky. Good luck!

Comments

4 responses to “GIGABYTE X570 AORUS XTREME CMOS Battery Replacement”

  1. Blazko Avatar
    Blazko

    Just a quick thank you, super helpful ;). Still running my xtreme x570 from 2021 and was wondering if I had to change the CMOS battery as I observed a prob w/ my clock. But after checking the vbat values as recommended I can see I’m at 3.3V…so at least, you spared me all the trouble :D !
    Probably some issue w/ my ram, bad idea to have the 4 slots occupied. Having trouble activating the xmp (which is weird, pretty sure I had it before that last win11 KB screwed my install’ and make me clear my CMOS.

    1. admin Avatar
      admin

      Thanks for the feedback! Hopefully, you can get XMP working, but the board’s daisy-chain design might make it indeed tricky.

      1. Blazko Avatar
        Blazko

        Yes thank you, I did manage to activate the XMP by only keeping 2 slots occupied (so down to 32GB) and setting manual timings in the UEFI, but at least it’s running at 3600Mhz now.
        FYI I’m currently using Kingston HyperX (code : KHX3600C17D4/16GX). Didn’t see them in the supported list from Gigabyte, so I purchased 2x32GB ram of Corsair Vengeance LPX (code : CMK64GX4M2D3600C18) which “are” listed in the supported list provided by Gigabyte.
        So hopefully I’ll get back to 64GB with the XMP profile at 3600Mhz activated.
        Curious to know what you have on your side and if XMP is working fine (sorry the off-topic here ^^).

  2. admin Avatar
    admin

    XMP is working fine for me with 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz C16. BIOS version is F38. It would surprise me if you get any problems with your new order but anyway good luck! :-)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.