Powenetics
The Powenetics project allows the accurate power measurements of graphics cards, CPUs, and SSD/HDDs. This system was designed with three primary purposes in mind: to be highly affordable, easy to use, and provide accurate data with fast polling rates, to be able to “catch” power spikes.
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Welcome to the Powenetics project, which allows accurate power measurements of graphics cards, CPUs, and SSD/HDDs. This system was designed with three primary purposes: to be highly affordable, easy to use, and provide accurate data with fast polling rates, to be able to "catch" power spikes. To keep the implementation cost as low as possible and provide, at the same time ability for every user to be able to find the needed parts easily, we carefully chose components that are widely available on the market.
The system consists of ten voltage/current sensors, three controllers which gather the data from the sensors, and a specially made PCIe riser card, which is used for measuring the power delivered through the PCIe slot at +12V and 3.3V rails to the graphics card.
Besides the highly affordable price of the parts required to build this system, its main assets are the accurate measurements and the capability to calibrate the sensors through software, if/when needed. Since the power measurements are conducted through shunt resistors, the system is resilient to EMI noise, which doesn't usually apply to measurements performed through Hall effect sensors. On top of that, the system provides all voltage and current data at precisely the same time point. Hence, it is easy to calculate the power that the graphics card consumes without having to combine data from two different sources (as is the case in Hall effect-based sensing power measuring systems), something requiring tight synchronization. Hall effect sensors can offer highly accurate current measurements. Still, in case several hounded measurements are needed per second to monitor power spikes, you need to synchronize the voltage readings with the current measurements from the Hall effect sensors, which from the moment they are not part of the circuit, cannot directly measure voltage. Still, another detector is needed for this task. Combining the data of two sensor systems and having it synchronized is quite tricky, especially under high data polling rates, given that you have to implement an algorithm that considers the possible data transmission delays, which are not constant but vary.
Each of the sensors used by the Powenetics system can measure current, power, and voltage up to 20A/720W/36V. The minimum resolution is 1mA, 1mW, and 1mV over the entire operating range; bidirectional current measurements are also possible. Finally, the averaging and ADC conversion time can be configured. This system has been initially offered to two major IT sites, which will evaluate it and help us further improve it.
- Tom's Hardware (USA)
- TecLab (Brazil)
The graphics card reviewers of the above sites will provide Cybenetics with detailed reports of their GPU measurements, allowing us to build a Graphics Card power measurement database soon. We intend to do the same with SSDs/HDDs at some point.
Our plans include providing, by request, this system to every site and company that need accurate GPU, CPU, and SSD/HDD power measurements for a reasonable fee which will allow us to further improve it in both hardware and software.
If you want to learn more about the Powenetics Project, email us using our contact form.
