Two 5,000 mAh pouch cells in parallel
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.
What it takes
- Disassembly
- Soldering
- Purchase required
Difficulty 3 of 3 — advanced.
Details
acelot's plan for an AIO v2 + NVMe build: two 5,000 mAh AliExpress pouch cells stacked vertically in place of the 18650s, in parallel. vileer confirmed both wiring options work — the two packs joined and soldered to the pack connector, or one to each 18650 pad — and snipeytje explains why there is no balancing worry: charging is on the mainboard, single-cell, and the stock 18650s are paralleled anyway. The one rule is to charge both cells fully before joining them, or large currents flow between them. hotellonely then measured a 2 × 5,000 mAh pair at 31.5 Wh under a medium load and 33.4 Wh under a light one, shutting down at 3.38 V, against the roughly 12 Wh trinity gets from 18650s on a CM5 that shuts down early under load. Pouch protection boards are the caveat — see the 10 Ah LiPo entry — and two packs in parallel is exactly vileer's suggested workaround.
Links
Open at Forum threadRelated mods
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.
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.
Any genuine branded 3,000–3,500 mAh 18650 works, flat-top or button-top; listings claiming much more than 3,500 mAh are fakes.
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.
hotellonely's Python script logs the PMIC's voltage and current every 0.1 s until the console dies, giving a real watt-hour figure for any cell or pack.