In last 1.5+ years bit more than a dozen of X299 Dark mbs went through my hands. They were purchased/obtained at various times from various places, some of them had serial # starting with 18 (indicating 2018 as year of manufacture), some with 19, and one I received from EVGA as RMA with 20.
After I became aware of issues with CMOS battery I made it a habit to replace EVGA’s one with brand new one as very first step. I haven’t kept notes on voltages for all of EVGA’s at time of replacement but here are notes for 7 of them in no particular order:
0.00V
0.02V
0.09V
0.17V
0.24V
3.09V
and last, but not least, 0.04V (this one I get relatively recently as RMA replacement by EVGA for one of my X299 Dark’s).
In other words:
1. Out of 7 I have data for not a single one arrived with good battery. That combined with fact my boards came from various places at various points in time enough apart from each other makes one feel EVGA didn’t have issue with small batch of batteries, that issue was (very?) widespread. Either that or something is draining them much faster than they should be.
2. At least two of these came from motherboards that had firmware chip with red dot on it. It is my understanding red dot indicates chip EVGA replaced after Cascade Lake X came out, which means sometimes in beginning of 2020. If that is correct that makes one feel EVGA had mb in their hand for chip replacement yet didn’t use that opportunity to replace battery even though they knew by then there is a question mark over batteries.
3. That very last battery, one that came dead in recent RMA, is most upsetting one. Receiving that makes one feel as if EVGA doesn’t check whether replacement actually passes all quality checks and works as it should before sending it to customer.