Time to Dive into Liquid Cooling - by Peter Judge

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 30 2009) Servers

1. 

   
   

   The system seals motherboards in a bath of non-conductive coolant (not water, obviously!), runs water through a channel built alongside it, and packs two of these units into one normal-sized blade unit. The back of the rack has a pump to push water through all the blades. There's a YouTube video which shows it well.

   Iceotope is not the only company doing this - at the same show, Green Revolution Computing demonstrated a computing node cooled by mineral oil.   

   It's worth noticing some of the surprising things about using liquid coolant. Firstly, according to Iceotope inventor, Peter Hopton, you don't need to chill the water, and you aren't compromising the lifecycle of your hardware by opting for this method. You can run water in at up to 45 degrees, and it still keeps the server chips within their operating temperature. 

   Secondly, alongside the savings on chilling plants, you get a useful resource. Liquid is much more efficient than gas at removing heat, and delivers it in a concentrated form. 

   The water coming out of the server rack is not going to be hot enough to run turbines and generate electricity of course - but it's easily good enough for room heating or providing hot water, either within the office building or in surrounding homes. Air coming out of the hot aisle of a data centre is much less useful, by comparison. 

   IBM is also working on liquid cooling, as part of its drive to offer zero emissions data centres within five years, and IBM spokespeople have predicted that liquid cooling will be applied generally, outside of specialised green data centres: all servers could be liquid-cooled in ten years, IBM consultant Doug Neilson told a London conference earlier this year.  

   IBM's pitch seems to be based less on reducing overall costs, but on getting heat out of the system in a useful form. 

   Sceptics have doubted the wisdom of mixing liquid with standard circuit boards and components - but vendors in the field claim to have solved that issue, and I'd say liquid cooling is ready for consideration. 

   Bookmark or Share this article

Login to comment.

Related Articles