NVIDIA Enthusiast System Architecture - new cooling standard

The new ESA standard is built around the current USB HID class specification and is designed to support new monitoring and control capabilities for PC devices such as chassis, power supplies, and water and air cooling peripherals. Until the introduction of ESA, there was no standard communication protocol allowing such components to report information back to users. Essential data, such as temperature, thermal, voltage, and air flow attributes are made available in real-time and are critical to obtaining maximum PC performance and overclocking. With ESA, component manufacturers can now embed a wide variety of digital and analog sensors into their devices which can communicate real-time data for use in analyzing and optimizing overall PC operating conditions. In addition, ESA's logging functionality offers PC manufacturers and system builders an inexpensive and easy way to help identify PC operating abnormalities, and enable them to quickly identify and resolve customer support issues.

"ESA is a communication protocol that ties together all the key aspects of a system," said Rahul Sood, CTO of Global Gaming Business at HP. "Most significant to HP is the fact that we can potentially use ESA-enabled technology to create a unique and immediately noticeable benefit to our customers."