I looked at the viability of doing something similar, using 48 volt telecom rectifiers as a PSU (but flipping around the ground reference, because they're all negative voltage).  They deliver substantial current on the cheap (200a at 48v, so 800a at 12v if you run them through a bunch of big ass batteries).  But at the end of the day you will have spent 1k on batteries and regulators, plus cabling, plus capacitors and diodes, yada yada yada.  By the time it's all over, you'll end up with 1.5k worth of crap, and a whole bunch of work, just to power up your "30" video cards, with a single point of failure, and a bunch of electronics that are hard to understand and hard to work on.  I looked at other options, like inexpensive 12 volt battery chargers, no dice.. they're too expensive.  The cheapest option you have is the $1000 worth of PSUs.

By the way, I read your other thread about the smoked components.. I've got a pretty good idea of what happened and why, based on a critical omission on your part while describing your setup.  Of course I'm going to be a troll and not reveal what it is, both because it's already been asked/answered on the forum at least once that I'm aware of, and because I'm not going to help anyone devalue my investment in mining any further by making it any cheaper for you, or anyone else, to do business.  Knowledge is power, and when you don't have it, sometimes you have to pay for someone else's, i.e. in the form of those expensive PSUs.  That smoke should make you less bullish on playing with fire, not more.


He seems pretty determined to do so, doesn't he?