As liquid cooling’s popularity begins to reach a boiling point within the data center industry—with industry analysts declaring liquid cooling will “go mainstream” by 2025—it’s vital to consider this question now before adoption rates skyrocket. Any cooling myths or misconceptions that aren’t dispelled prior to implementation could lead to poorer thermal performance or aggravated TCOs or even total system failure.

Because the truth is this: you aren’t just adopting a liquid cooling solution; you’re also adopting the liquid itself. And as we’ll soon explore, no fluid on the market is a “silver bullet,” manufactured to effortlessly tackle the thermal demands of NVIDIA’s NVL576 racks (using up to 600kW of power) with zero strings attached. Three of the most popular liquid cooling methods (i.e., two-phase immersion, single-phase direct-to-chip, and two-phase direct-to-chip) utilize fluids that all come equipped with their own unique strengths and drawbacks.

Whether each fluid’s strengths are worth their drawbacks, however—that’s another matter entirely.