Stefan Mileschin

Big data centers are often cooled by air, and large HVAC/air-conditioning machines. The ones near the Arctic Circle can rely on the outside air to help. If a center invests properly, especially with a specific design and layout in mind, then using water cooling is another investment that can be made. If a designer really wants to go off the deep end, then full immersion liquid cooling is a possibility.

Immersive liquid cooling is ultimately not that new, and is based on non-conductive liquids. It allows for the full system to be cooled: all of the components, all of the time, and removes the need for large cooling apparatus, and encourages energy recycling, which is a major metric for data center owners. For data centers limited by space, it also offers better density of server nodes in a confined space, ideal for deployments on the edge of communication networks.

There are two angles to immersion cooling: non-phase change, or phase change. The first one, non-phase change, involves using a liquid with a high heat capacity, and cycling through a heat exchange system. The downside of those liquids is that they often have a high viscosity (mineral oil), requiring a lot of energy to forcibly circulate. By contrast, the phase-change variety is, for most purposes, self-convecting.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12522...-splash-at-mwc