With more and more processing power being packed into servers supporting artificial intelligence and other processor-intensive applications, rack power requirements are exceeding 20 kilowatts (kW) in a growing number of facilities, and many organizations are now looking to deploy racks with requirements of 50 kW or more.

Air cooling systems have continually evolved to address higher densities with greater efficiency, but there is a point at which air simply does not have the thermal transfer properties required to provide sufficient cooling to high-density racks in an efficient manner. This can reduce the performance and reliability of specialized servers and becomes less energy efficient as rack power increases. As more high-power racks are deployed, air cooling becomes untenable from an economic and sustainability perspective.

As a result, more organizations are exploring the feasibility of bringing liquid to the rack to increase the capacity and efficiency of data center cooling. Liquid cooling leverages the higher thermal transfer properties of water or other fluids to support efficient and cost-effective cooling of high-density racks.

Download this whitepaper for a full scale overview of liquid cooling technology with a focus on how data center infrastructure has evolved to support liquid cooling.