The internet is replete with information on liquid cooling. Liquid cooling is the process of cooling data center computer equipment with liquid instead of the traditional air-cooling that is used in most data centers. This post is a list of liquid cooling resources to educate you on the pros and cons of different liquid cooling options.
White Papers
Schneider Electric published a white paper in 2020 entitled Capital Cost Analysis of Immersive Liquid-Cooled vs. Air-Cooled Large Data Centers comparing the installation and operating costs of immersion liquid cooling vs traditional air-cooling.
Power Solutions published a white paper in 2020 entitled Data Center Cooling Trends for Small to Medium Data Centers that describes trends in high-power-density cooling solutions.
The Minnesota Department of Commerce field tested liquid cooling on direct-to-chip vs immersion cooling. They published a white paper in 2017 entitled Energy Impacts of Liquid Cooling on Small to Medium Size Data Centers in Minnesota.
Liquid Cooling Products
2CRSI is a global company that manufactures server equipment for data centers. They have published an article for direct-to-chip cooling servers and immersion cooling servers.
JetCool manufactures an innovative plate cooling technology called Microconvective® cooling for direct-to-chip, two-phase cooling.
Aspen Systems, Inc. builds integrated servers and liquid cooling solutions from Motivair Cooling Solutions, NVent, Chilldyne Liquid Cooling Solutions, and CoolIT.
The Motivair® Chilled Door® is a liquid cooled door that is a great retrofit option to add liquid cooling to air-cooled data center racks.
Boyd’s Coolant Distribution Units (CDUs) are used to distribute liquid in racks for direct-to-chip liquid cooling. Boyd also manufactures plate cooling heat exchangers for direct-to-chip liquid cooling.
Liquid Cooling Articles
Liquid Cooling Data Center Trend: (2021) Power Solutions compares alternatives to improve cooling efficiency with hot and cold aisle containment, direct-to-chip liquid cooling, and immersion liquid cooling.
The Saga of Liquid Cooling: (2023) Enabled Energy’s article on the history of liquid cooling from the early times of the Cray Supercomputer to its recent re-emergence in modern high-power density data centers.
The Weird World of Liquid Cooling for Datacenters: (2022) Hackaday’s article on innovative liquid cooling approaches. immersion, direct-to-chip, underwater, and two-phase immersion cooling technologies implemented by reputable IT companies.
Asetek Delivers Waste Heat to the Aalborg District Heating Network: (2020) Asetek delivers waste heat to the Aalborg district heating network. The use of waste heat from liquid cooling data centers for district heating in Denmark.
The Best Liquid Cooling Solution For Your Data Centre: (2021) Quick article comparing three main liquid cooling options and how to decide which option is best.
Liquid Cooling In Action—On Our Own Production Servers: Equinix teamed up with ZutaCore to test two-phase direct-to-chip liquid cooling in one of their data centers. This article describes the lessons learned in this test.
Liquid Cooling: Benefits and Challenges: Cold Logic discusses why liquid cooling is the best option for higher power density data centers and which option is best for each power density system.
8 Common Questions About Direct to Chip Liquid Cooling: (2020) Informative frequently asked questions information on direct-to-chip liquid cooling systems published by Rittal HPC systems using Zutacore two-phase chip plate heat exchangers.
Direct Liquid Cooling for Data Centers: (2021) Article on liquid cooling for data centers with insight on how control systems can monitor key aspects of a liquid cooling system.
Videos
Liquid Cooling High-End Servers Direct to Chip, Rear Door, and Immersion Cooling: Serve The Home reviews the basic performance of rear-door vs immersion liquid cooling.
There have been multiple articles published on liquid cooling by equipment manufacturers who favor their equipment and their approach to liquid cooling. Enabled Energy is a product agnostic data center engineering and construction firm that can help you find the optimum cooling solution for your data center, whether it is liquid-cooling or an energy efficient air-cooling option. To learn more about our suite of services, contact us today at info@enabledenergy.net.
About the Author
Jeff Schuster has been actively engaged as a senior engineer in the energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy conservation industry since 1987. Jeff has been a successful energy manager, an energy efficiency engineer, a sales executive in the performance contracting industry, a business owner of a regional energy service company in Colorado, and now works with Enabled Energy Inc. as a consultant and coach. Jeff has held a professional engineering license in six states in the U.S., has been a CEM for over two decades, and is LEED-AP certified.
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