Aquacomputer AMPINEL 12V-2x6 Graphics Card Power Management - Type A (53319)

AMPINEL is a power supply balancer for graphics cards with 12V-2x6 power connector, explicitly developed and released for NVIDIA RTX 4000 and RTX 5000 series cards. Release for AMD cards is currently being worked on and will communicated after successful validation.

AMPINEL works in a much more complex way than other solutions on the market. As a balancer, AMPINEL actively regulates the current on the individual rails, thereby reducing power losses at the connector. This may sound simple at first, but requires highly complex measurement algorithms, as AMPINEL does not simply equalize the current on all lines, but also takes heat generation at the connector into account. To do this, AMPINEL determines the quality of the connections, which is only possible through a complex analysis of the measurement data. Since the power consumption of graphics cards is highly dynamic and the current may change significantly in the range of microseconds, this has been one of the most difficult tasks in our development.
By evaluating the measurement data, AMPINEL can determine not only the contact resistance to the graphics card, but also in the path from the power supply to AMPINEL. The results are visualized in the aquasuite software, where different colors represent resistances in a schematic of the corresponding connectors, thus enabling easy diagnosis in the event of problematic contact resistances.

To enable optimum protection of the graphics card, the following objectives have been defined for the AMPINEL control logic:
1. The current must not exceed 9.2 A at any of the contacts (plus 5% control tolerance).
2. The total power loss at the connector should be minimized respecting this specification; the current is then balanced accordingly.
3. The power loss of individual contacts must not exceed a specified power rating.
4. The maximum power loss at the balancer must not be exceeded.
5. The temperatures at both connectors and at the balancer are monitored.

Finely nuanced alarm management
In addition to visual and audible alarms, a wide range of actions can be defined. These range from pop-up messages to automatic termination of software that causes a high GPU load, sending of definable hotkeys, shutdown of the PC, switching of alarm outputs, switching off of the Sense lines, and hard shutdown of the graphics card power supply via AMPINEL.
Overall, the alarm system is controlled in 8 stages, for which the corresponding escalation levels can be defined.

Power limitation via Sense contacts
The maximum power reported by the power supply via the Sense contacts can optionally be reduced by AMPINEL to put the graphics card into a more economical operating mode. AMPINEL supports power levels of 600 watts and 450 watts.

Configurable balancer
The balancer can be limited to a control range of 0-100%. If you only want to use the alarm functions in the event of an alarm and do not want to use balancing, you can configure the control range to 0%.

Display and lighting
AMPINEL has an OLED display, a button, and multicolor lighting. The data to be shown on the display can be selected in aquasuite. Several alternating views are possible. Currents, voltages, and other AMPINEL measurements are quickly visualized and can assist in troubleshooting the cable.
In addition, a variety of PC hardware data can also be displayed on the AMPINEL display, and text and graphic logos can be customized according to your preferences.
The integrated lighting can display a wide range of measurement data, for example, the current power consumption of the graphics card can be visualized as a colored bar graph.

Connector orientation type A and type B