Liquid Cooled Servers – LCS

Keeping cool with LCS

Liquid Cooled Servers from Thomas-Krenn are a joint project with Cloud&Heat, pioneers in the integration of direct hot-water cooling in data centers. LCSs are water-cooled systems that combine standard servers with a special cooling kit. In this way, we enable effective server cooling and the utilization of waste heat in the data center. The result is considerable savings on heating and electricity costs for your company.

Worldwide, IT is expected to account for around 20% of total energy consumption in 2030. More efficient technologies for cooling and heat recovery are urgently needed to improve the energy efficiency of data centers. Rising electricity costs represent a significant cost factor. Using waste heat by connecting server water cooling to the building's hot water systems can significantly reduce electricity costs. In addition, this allows you to position yourself as a sustainability-oriented company that takes active measures to reduce its_CO2 footprint and engages in climate-neutral economic activity.

Together with our partner Cloud&Heat, we guarantee you a complete package for sustainable server water cooling in your data center – from planning and infrastructure adaptation to implementation.
 

Why liquid cooling?

• It reduces energy consumption
• It significantly increases power density
• It emits little to no local noise
• It lowers chip temperatures
• It reduces dust build-up

How does it work?

IT hardware converts 100% of the electrical energy supplied to it into thermal energy. The heat generated by processors (CPUs and increasingly GPUs) can be dissipated particularly effectively via water cooling. Instead of simply releasing the waste heat into the air unused in a classic air cooling system, this energy is stored and can be used, for example, for your own heating applications (see figure). The use of waste heat in the data center through cloud&heat cooling offers significant potential for energy cost savings through improved efficiency.
 

Direct hot-water cooling – Liquid Cooled Servers from Thomas-Krenn

The liquid cooling of the LCS cooling kits is based on direct hot-water cooling. The kit consists of individual heat sinks, which are mounted on standard components (CPUs and RAM) of the server and form a hydraulic circuit. Direct hot-water cooling thereby dissipates the thermal output of the IT components directly where it is generated. The cooling kit of the RI2208-LCS is designed for a high outlet temperature of 60°C of the cooling fluid. Liquid Cooled Server systems also allow load-dependent heat recovery. The hybrid design combining the direct hot-water cooling of the server chipsets with the air cooling of the power supplies also reduces power consumption by maximizing the use of free cooling. Previously installed RI2208 rack servers can be easily retrofitted with the cooling kit.

Figure: Energy flow diagrams – conventional air cooling and Cloud&Heat cooling comparison
(Source: Cloud&Heat white paper: "CO2 and cost-saving potentials through the Cloud&Heat cooling system with waste heat utilization in data centers", 2019).

Thanks to the high thermal conductivity offered by water as a cooling medium, existing heat sources in the server can be cooled much more efficiently. This also increases the power density in the server rack compared to air cooling systems. Direct hot-water cooling is particularly suitable for computationally intensive and cooling-intensive applications in the fields of AI, GPU computing and cloud computing.

Potential savings achieved via the Cloud&Heat cooling technology:

1. Reduced energy consumption from onboard fans

2. More energy efficient cooling

3. Use of waste heat

Electricity and water: Is this really a good idea for the data center?

With our Liquid Cooled Servers you are on the safe side. The coolant is never in direct contact with electronic components. Mainframes have long been successfully cooled with water. Even the latest electric cars use water cooling to keep complex battery systems within efficient temperature windows. Cloud&Heat can also look back on many successfully implemented projects in the field of server water cooling. With such an experienced partner at your side and Liquid Cooled Servers from Thomas-Krenn, nothing stands in the way of integrating liquid cooling into your infrastructure.