Battery marvel
An enthusiast with the nickname Uwoslab created a unique desktop PC powered exclusively by 192 AA batteries. Not only did the computer successfully boot into a special Linux distribution, Hannah Montana Linux, but it also passed a CPU stress test without issues and even launched the game FreeDoom.
Power supply design
The project started with 400 batteries, but eventually 192 units were used. Uwoslab divided them into three wooden boxes of 64 batteries each. Each box had laser-cut holes into which four batteries were inserted in series, and the entire array was connected in parallel. The result was a 12V power supply that was fed into a DC-to-ATX converter directly on the motherboard.
Performance and stability
The system was built on the AM4 platform without a dedicated graphics card, only with a G-series processor. During the stress-ng stress test, CPU utilization reached 98%, and the voltage dropped from an initial 13V to a stable 11.95V. This proves that even alkaline batteries can provide stable power for a modern computer when properly connected.
The entire project is a demonstration that even in the age of lithium-ion batteries, a functional desktop can be built using ordinary AA cells. Uwoslab plans to further improve his creation, for example by adding storage and active cooling.