Immersion Comparison
How does immersion cooling compare to air cooling and water cooling?
E3 NV has experience with air-cooled data centers, air-cooled modular data centers, several direct-chip-technologies, single-phase immersion, and most recently two-phase immersion. The info below is based on our real-world experience and the experiences of our customers.
Air Cooling
Pros:
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Extremely well understood and quantified
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No additional cost
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Current OEM systems are designed for air cooling
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Equipment is easy to service
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No plumbing
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Good scaling from small to large
Cons:
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Extremely Noisy
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Requires more frequent maintenance
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Low density – higher cost for servers (per core)
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Inefficient – Fans waste 25% of IT power on typical servers
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Large footprint
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More networking equipment
Single-Phase Immersion
Pros:
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Already well understood
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Simple control systems
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Up to 75% reduction in cooling power
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Engineered fluids are less expensive than two-phase
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Very high material compatibility
Cons:
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Equipment is covered in fluid when removed
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Not as efficient as two-phase
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Plumbing can get complex quickly
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Does not scale well to multi-megawatt sizes
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Requires larger, more expensive cooling coils
Two-Phase Immersion
Pros:
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High build quality by necessity
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Up to 98% reduction in cooling power
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Long life fluid (20 years)
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High cooling capacity (4kw per liter)
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Equipment is dry and clean when removed
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Fairly simple plumbing
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Excellent scaling
Cons:
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Not ideal at small scales
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Control costs are the same for 250kW and 10kW
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Controls are complex and expensive
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Cannot use HDDs
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Tanks must be stainless
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Fluids leak easily so quality control must be tightly adhered to
Direct to Chip Fluid Cooling
Pros:
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Well understood
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Up to 60% reduction in cooling cost
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Almost all servers can be modified
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Easy road to higher density
Cons:
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Still have fans
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Large footprint for plumbing and chillers
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Awful scaling – Infrastructure size grows faster with higher densities
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Greatly increased maintenance costs
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High additional cost