C2750D4I: battery voltage alarms

[nickt]

Hi all,

Wondering if anyone else has seen this... after running just fine for a few days, my new C2750D4I based build started blasting email alerts at me (configured through IPMI) complaining of low motherboard battery voltage. It was reporting critical and non-recoverable low voltage alerts, which are set at 2.5 and 2.379 V respectively. For a new board, this seems odd. Watching the voltages in real time, there seems to be a reasonable amount of fluctuation in measured battery voltage. All PSU related voltages look very stable.

Has anyone else seen this? Any comments / thoughts?

I'm not too worried - for a server that will be always on, battery isn't critical, but it is odd nevertheless...

Thanks,

Nick

 

[hugovsky]

Have you tryed changing the battery? could be dead.

 

[rogerh]

Check battery seating, check for conductive debris on the board. Put in a new battery (cheap enough) and if the variation persists it may be a motherboard fault.

 

[DrKK]

Yeah, these coin cells (often a CR2032) are often pieces of crap. Usually, though, the motherboard guys will use a better grade coin cell, since the difference in price is not enough to risk RMA's.

Like Rogerh says, you might try this:

* Take the battery out
* Clean the battery vigorously (with alcohol or something)
* Clean the contact points on the mobo vigorously with alcohol.

You should probably do that anyway, even if you're replacing the battery. You can get the battery anywhere that sells such things. I see you're in Australia, so something like a Woolworth should do it.

 

[nickt]

Thanks guys - that confirms my thinking. Just wanted to get an idea of whether this was a known issue for this board (perhaps the standard alarm thresholds are a bit tight), but it sounds like a dodgy battery is more likely. As you say, not hard to try an alternative.

 

[DataKeeper]

I've had 1 dead battery in a new Supermicro and another in a Tyan board over the years. Easy and cheap enough to fix. If you have a multimeter handy, free quite often via Harbor Freight coupons, you should check the battery as well. On one other system we found that the battery was just fine and the board itself had a fault which needed to be returned and replaced.

Don't put off the testing to long just in case it does need to be replaced.

 

[jgreco]

I've got a high end Supermicro board occasionally alarming on this. New battery, contact cleaner, no difference. Currently seeing how far down in the IPMI the threshold has to be set to bugger off. Sometimes all this newfangled stuff isn't an improvement.

 

[nickt]

Thanks - I will get onto testing a new battery (and checking the old) - new board would be something to sort sooner rather than later.

Having said that - I agree with jgreco - it is hard not to see this as more of a pain than anything else. I've tested the crap out of my system over the last week or so - it hasn't missed a beat with temperatures, voltages or SMART reports all under heavy CPU, disk and memtest loading. Too much information...

The most annoying part of this was receiving emails from IPMI one hour into a 3 night getaway with my wife (kids with the grandparents) reporting "unrecoverable low voltage alert". I didn't know it was only the battery until I got back home...!!!

Oh well...