DIY modding and PC gaming usually go hand in hand, and if there’s one concept we’ve seen taken to the limit over and over, it’s hardcore DIY PC enthusiasts attempting to run systems on homemade power supplies. Enter the Uwos Lab, a self-proclaimed “mad scientist” YouTuber who decided (on a whim, we’re guessing) to build a massive powerbank comprising several AA batteries. And by several, we mean 192 units.
As adventurous as this is, it should be pointed out that the Uwos Lab’s project wasn’t as complicated as it may sound. They started with 400 AA batteries initially, with the plan being that they’d create four separate packs containing 100 AA batteries each. They would then wire up eight cells in parallel, and then connect those wired cells in series until they had 50 of them
Unfortunately, life and the universe had other plans for them and at the end of the day, they ended up wiring only 192 AA batteries together, which they split across three boxes. The boxes aren’t anything special: they’re made of wood and were just there to provide some form of storage and structural rigidity, with negative and positive terminals at the end of them. Then, in true DIY fashion, they used masking tape to hold the entire powerbank together.
So, the question is: did the DIY powerbank work? Yes, it did, and more surprisingly, it worked on the more modern AMD AM4 chipset, no less. Uwos Lab shows that he powered the system via a 12V DC-to-ATX adapter board, and plugged it straight into the motherboard.
For their effort, Uwos Lab was able to run Hannah Montana Linux — yes, this is real — and booting it straight from a flash drive, since there was no storage installed on to the motherboard. But the most important takeaway from this is that the project was an overwhelming success; the CPU, which we’re guessing is a G-Series APU, was shown to be running at 98% usage with a 11.95V usage, while the powerbank was reading out at 13V.
(Source: Uwos Lab via YouTube, Tom’s Hardware)
