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Page 2 of 4 ESA Support: A good new feature of the 780x chipset, which is not found in any previous nForce chipset, or for that matter in the 750x chipset, is support for ESA – Enthusiast System Architecture, which is something nVidia is backing quite heavily along with many other hardware manufacturers. If you haven’t heard of ESA, what it basically is is an open standard for monitoring AND controlling many of the components in your PC, such as the Power Supply, Cooling Systems for CPU/Graphics/Case + more, lights on your case and more, as well as log data such as voltages and temperatures. With ESA you can switch off rails in the PSU, set up rules for automatic cooling setups to control your fans or water cooling, control lights based on feedback from temp sensors plus more. In the future it is hoped that ESA can be used to enable a SmartPC, that can perform self tuning and overclocking and/or turn devices on and off depending on the application that is running on the PC. All sounds impressive but I’ll reserve my judgement until I see how it all works in the real world. Although hardware level support for ESA is required in the components (PSU, Case etc...) there is no integrated hardware in the motherboard itself, as it’s all controlled through USB, so why (and how?) nVidia couldn’t include support for ESA on the cheaper 750x chipset motherboards, I’ll never know, obviously it’s not part of their marketing strategy.
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