How Many AA Batteries Does It Take to Power Your PC?
Can you power a gaming PC with nothing but AA batteries? ScuffedBits proved that if you have enough of them, you can.
It should come as no surprise that just about anything that plugs into an electrical outlet can run on batteries. This is because most electronic devices convert the AC mains input into DC via a power supply before it is used. So — perhaps with a slight modification — DC power can be supplied directly to the circuit via batteries. That’s not to say this is a good idea or in any way convenient, however. Some electronics need lots of power, and running them on batteries is terribly impractical.
It’s even more impractical if you limit yourself to using alkaline AA batteries. But that’s just what YouTuber ScuffedBits decided to use to power his gaming computer. If this sounds like a bad idea, that’s because it is. But it does work — if only for a short time.
The experiment involved bypassing a traditional ATX power supply entirely. Instead of converting 120V AC from the wall into low-voltage DC rails, ScuffedBits used a Pico-style DC-DC ATX adapter that accepts a 12V DC input directly. In theory, eight 1.5V AA batteries wired in series should provide the necessary 12V to boot a motherboard.
But voltage isn’t everything. While eight batteries can provide the correct voltage, they cannot supply enough current to handle the sudden surge required when a PC powers on. The first attempt resulted in nothing more than a brief twitch of the fans before the voltage collapsed. Even scaling up to 16 and 24 batteries didn’t solve the issue; thin wiring and voltage sag under load caused the system to crash instantly.
The solution came after dramatically increasing the battery count and improving the wiring. In the final configuration, 56 alkaline AA batteries were arranged in a combination of series and parallel groups to maintain 12V while increasing available current. Two large 6,800 µF capacitors were added near the DC input to buffer sudden spikes in demand during boot and load transitions.
With this setup, the PC finally ran — sort of.
Attempting to launch a modern game immediately pulled roughly 70 watts, dragging the voltage down to around 10V and shutting the system off within seconds. However, lighter workloads proved more manageable. ScuffedBits successfully booted into Windows and played a round of Minesweeper before the voltage gradually dropped below the adapter’s cutoff threshold of just over 10V. Total runtime: roughly two minutes and fifteen seconds.
In a final stress test, a dedicated graphics card was installed. The machine managed to render a 3D game for only a few seconds before the voltage sagged to 9.7V and the system died completely. Be sure to check out the video below to see this ridiculous setup in action.