ScuffedBits shows off an AA battery PC build with 64 cells and voltage regulators
YouTuber ScuffedBits is showing battery PC experiments on YouTube, this time pushing an old desktop to run for more than 30 minutes on 64 AA batteries. The system was able to boot directly from the battery bank, load into Windows, complete a Cinebench run, and even survive a short Minecraft session before finally shutting down. The final runtime was 33 minutes and 19 seconds.
This isn’t the first time he did such a build, but the first clearly needed some improvements. In fact, it was only able to sustain the PC load for a couple of minutes. So instead of wiring the AA cells for a direct 12V output, ScuffedBits rebuilt the pack to deliver about 25V. That reduced current through the thin wiring, while three voltage regulators connected in parallel stepped the output back down to a stable 12V for the PC. The enthusiast also removed crocodile clips and soldered the connections directly, which helped reduce resistance further.
Source: ScuffedBits
Once powered on, the machine booted fully on battery power alone, with no external jump-start. The hardware included an Intel Core i3-530 , 8GB of memory, and a WD SATA SSD. From there, the system loaded a game called A Short Hike, completed a Cinebench run with a score in line with earlier wall-powered testing, and later joined a Minecraft Hypixel Party Games session. The setup eventually died just as Portal 2 was about to launch. I guess the next step would be to run Crysis?
Source: ScuffedBits
This got me thinking, would it be possible to run a desktop GeForce RTX 5090 from a battery? Of course it would, but if we are talking about small AA or AAA batteries, that would require around 50A at 12V. In other words, such a system would need roughly 600 batteries for the GPU alone. Or you could just plug the system into a UPS and call it a day.
Source: ScuffedBits
