The thermal management of existing data centers is centered on forced convection using air as the transport fluid. A large portion of the energy required for typical data centers is used in maintaining reasonable operating temperatures, and many have looked to liquid cooling as a promising solution to increased energy efficiency. The current work is a case study of making this transition for a single computer board. The energy savings potential is quantified and the removal of heat via liquid cooling is characterized from the chip level to the environment. A thermal solution model is developed and validated through experimentation. The experiment consists of a rack-mounted computer board to simulate a server and cold plates attached at several key locations for cooling. Multiple measurements are made to determine the amount of heat removed and power consumed in the process. The results from this study show that liquid-cooling presents an improved thermal solution to data centers and the energy savings potential is large, which improves the power usage effectiveness since power is mostly used in data processing rather than server cooling.
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ASME/JSME 2011 8th Thermal Engineering Joint Conference
March 13–17, 2011
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
Conference Sponsors:
- Heat Transfer Division
ISBN:
978-0-7918-3892-1
PROCEEDINGS PAPER
Case Study for Energy-Efficiency of Liquid-Cooled Data Centers Available to Purchase
Ricardo Rivera-Lopez,
Ricardo Rivera-Lopez
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
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Mark Kimber
Mark Kimber
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Search for other works by this author on:
Ricardo Rivera-Lopez
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Mark Kimber
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Paper No:
AJTEC2011-44383, T10091; 7 pages
Published Online:
March 1, 2011
Citation
Rivera-Lopez, R, & Kimber, M. "Case Study for Energy-Efficiency of Liquid-Cooled Data Centers." Proceedings of the ASME/JSME 2011 8th Thermal Engineering Joint Conference. ASME/JSME 2011 8th Thermal Engineering Joint Conference. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. March 13–17, 2011. T10091. ASME. https://doi.org/10.1115/AJTEC2011-44383
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