Nvidia pitches ESA to monitor chassis, power supplies, water cooling

Santa Clara (CA) - Nvidia takes the lead in a new industry initiative that aims to bring control over the performance of the overall PC chassis, power supplies and water cooling systems to high-end PCs.

Called “Enthusiast System Architecture”, short ESA, the technology is built around an information protocol that is designed to enable users to add another tuning stage to performance PCs.

ESA describes the PC chassis, power supplies and water cooling systems - components that so far have been detached from a network of devices that can be monitored – to be equipped with analog and digital microcontrollers and sensors as well as a software layer that reaches through to Windows to allow integration into Nvidia’s nTune software. Nvidia representatives explained that the three components will be connected through USB HID cables ; the chassis is expected to integrate a USB hub to combine the connections.

If everything works as planned, the users will be able to monitor airflow, lighting and temperature of the chassis, power efficiency and temperature of the power supply unit as well as measure water temperature, pump speed and resistance of the water cooling system. According to Nvidia, HP, Dell Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, CoolIt, Tyan, Thermaltek and Coolermaster are participating in the ESA initiative.

First ESA-compliant components are expected to be available in November, Nvidia said.