Friday, November 16, 2007

Take Control of Your Components With ESA

What if you could control and monitor all aspects of your computer, from the power supply to the chassis, in order to boost its performance? The concept isn’t new to power users, who sometimes go to elaborate lengths to maximize their PCs’ speed. But a new open standard, Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA), spearheaded by nVidia, might help make this component information easier to access.

“ESA enables components such as chassis, power supplies, and water-cooling systems to communicate status and control in real time,” said Waleed Zamel, nVidia’s technical marketing manager, in a statement. “ESA-compliant applications provide enthusiasts with unprecedented software control to achieve better performance [and] optimal thermal and acoustic operating environments.”

nVidia's partners in promoting ESA include system builders and component manufacturers such as Asus, Cooler Master, Dell, Falcon Northwest, Gigabyte, HP, and Thermaltake. At press time, CoolIt Systems was offering its Freezone Elite CPU Cooler, which features the MTEC Control Center module. ESA-compliant motherboards and desktops should be available by the time you read this.

“By providing ESA-compliant [equipment], it enables users to exploit the full potential of the hardware,” said Zamel in the statement. “This kind of engineering cooperation is targeted to enable our mutual enthusiast customers to push the technology to new heights.”

Source