Storage Cells

Storage Cells are one of the primary methods of storage in Applied Energistics. They go in ME Drives or ME Chests.

See Bytes and Types for an explanation of their capacities in bytes and types.

Cells can be disassembled back into a storage component and housing: First empty the cell, then shift-right-click with the cell in your hand.

Error: Missing recipe: upgrade/item_storage_cell_1k_to_4k

You can upgrade storage cells to higher tiers by combining them with higher-tier storage components in a crafting grid. Their content will be retained, and the lower-tier component is returned.

Storage Capacity with Varying Type Count

The upfront cost of types is such that a cell holding 1 type can hold 2x as much as a cell with all 63 types in use.

Cell	Total Capacity of Cell With 1 Type In Use	Total Capacity of Cell With 63 Types In Use
1k ME Item Storage Cell	8,128	4,160
4k ME Item Storage Cell	32,512	16,640
16k ME Item Storage Cell	130,048	66,560
64k ME Item Storage Cell	520,192	266,240
256k ME Item Storage Cell	2,080,768	1,064,960

Partitioning

Cells can be filtered to only accept certain items, similar to how ME Storage Buses can be filtered. This is done in a Cell Workbench.

Items can be dragged into the slots from JEI/REI even if you don't actually have any of that item.

Upgrades

Storage cells support the following upgrades, inserted via a Cell Workbench:

Fuzzy Card (not available on fluid cells) lets the cell be partitioned by damage level and/or ignore item NBT
Inverter Card switches the filter from a whitelist to a blacklist
Equal Distribution Card allocates the same amount of cell byte space to each type, so one type cannot fill up the entire cell
Overflow Destruction Card voids items inserted if the cell is full (or that specific type's allocated space in the case of an equal distribution card), useful for stopping farms from backing up. Be careful to partition this!
Portable cells can accept Energy Card in order to increase their battery capacity

Coloring

Portable item and fluid cells can be colored similar to leather armor, by crafting them together with dyes.

Housings

Cells can be made with a storage component and a housing or with the housing recipe around a storage component:

Crafting

Crafting (Shapeless)

Housings by themselves are crafted like so:

Crafting

Storage Components

Storage Components are the core of all AE2 cells, determining the capacity of the cells. Each tier increases the capacity by 4x and costs 3 of the previous tier.

Crafting

Item Storage Cells

Item storage cells can hold up to 63 distinct types of items, and are available in all the standard capacities.

Crafting (Shapeless)

Portable Item Storage

These act as a tiny ME Chest in your pocket, or like a form of backpack. They can be charged in a Charger

Unlike standard storage cells, these actually reduce in type capacity as their byte capacity increases, and have half the total byte capacity.

In addition to the upgrade cards all cells can receive, these also accept Energy Cards to upgrade their internal batteries.

Crafting (Shapeless)

Fluid Storage Cells

Fluid storage cells can hold up to 5 distinct types of fluids, and are available in all the standard capacities.

Crafting (Shapeless)

Portable Fluid Storage

These act as a tiny ME Chest in your pocket, or like a form of backpack. They can be charged in a Charger

Unlike standard storage cells, these actually reduce in type capacity as their byte capacity increases, and have half the total byte capacity.

In addition to the upgrade cards all cells can receive, these also accept Energy Cards to upgrade their internal batteries.

Crafting (Shapeless)

Creative Storage Cell

Creative cells do not provide infinite storage. Instead, they act as infinite sources and sinks of whatever item or fluid you partition them to.