10 Ah LiPo pouch in place of the 18650s
Swap the two 18650s for a single 10,000 mAh 9858102 pouch — 24–31 Wh measured — but only with a protection board that survives the uConsole's 5 A peaks.
What it takes
- Disassembly
- Soldering
- Purchase required
Difficulty 3 of 3 — advanced.
Details
hotellonely's write-up is the current recipe: a Lishen 10,000 mAh 9858102 pouch from AliExpress on the LiPo version of the HackerGadgets NVMe battery board (pre-soldered jumper, JST PH2.0 input), with pre-crimped PH2.0 pigtails soldered and heat-shrunk to the pack leads at 8–10 cm so the connector stays reachable, and pushed fully home with needle-nose pliers because a loose connector caused power problems. On a CM5 it ran welle.io DAB radio for about 4 h 20 min continuously, averaging 1.8–2 A with 3 A peaks; his benchmark script puts the pack at 24–31 Wh under a light load. grandrew did the same on the stock battery board in 2024, saw 4.08 V and 24.8 Wh with shut-offs at 10 %, and cured it by bypassing the F1/F2 PTC fuses and lowering the minimum discharge voltage to 3.1 V — which also removes the board's overcurrent protection, so it is not the route to copy.
The warning that matters: most pouch packs come with a 3 A protection board, and HackerGadgets now advises against LiPo on its board because the console needs 5 A at peak, especially with an NVMe drive fitted; the 'LiPo Battery Issue' thread shows a 10 Ah pack dying after five minutes on battery as its voltage sagged below 3.6 V above 2.5 A. vileer's suggestion is two smaller packs in parallel, or 18650s. Leon2048's fan-and-battery back cover (in Thermal) is the printed cover most of these builds use.
Links
Open at Forum threadRelated mods
Stack two 5 Ah pouches where the 18650s were and wire them in parallel to the battery board for about 31–33 Wh — after charging both to the same level.
The 21700 version of HG's NVMe battery board fits the stock backplate and roughly doubles runtime: 4 h 31 min of 1080p playback against 2 h 27 min on 18650s.
beams' MSK12C02 slide switch uses the pads HackerGadgets reserved on the NVMe battery board to cut the cells — and the NVMe — without a hole in the case.
A Crouzet 83170.4 microswitch on the battery board's J6 pads, reached through the rear antenna hole, gives a CM5 a reset button without drilling.
CRANK's 6 × 18650 plan: strip the holders off the battery board, wire two banks of three cells in parallel through bus bars, and house them in a printed back.
UJW's deeper printed back fits two 10,000 mAh 146074 pouches and a Waveshare CM5 active cooler over the HackerGadgets boards — designed in CAD, not yet built.