MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 5,1 CMOS Battery Questions

[danallen]

I have a 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 running macOS 15.6 via OpenCore Legacy Patcher.

I have never given much thought to the CR2032 battery. Recently I started reading about it and came across claims that a weak or missing battery can cause loss of the selected startup disk, NVRAM settings, clock settings, and possibly result in occasional boot issues such as a flashing folder with a question mark while the Mac searches for a bootable volume.

First, are those claims accurate for a Mac Pro 5,1?

Second, is it realistic for a CR2032 battery in a Mac Pro 5,1 to remain functional for more than a decade? I received this machine in 2014, and I am curious whether it is plausible that the battery could still be doing its job after all these years.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone with direct experience regarding battery life and the actual consequences of a weak or missing battery in these machines.

 

[Bigwaff]

Yup, all true. Also, you would want to replace w/ a BR2032 rather than CR2032. The BR2032 is designed to handle the high heat inside a computer. I would replace -before- things go sideways. Replacing is not difficult but you need to take care not to snap off the little clamps that hold the battery in place when removing the installed battery.