GIGABYTE Announces Data Center Liquid Immersion Cooling

Controller Master



GIGABYTE Technology, today announced participation in KDDI’s one-phase immersion cooling proof of concept that demonstrates how alternative cooling solutions in data centers are needed and should be environmentally minded. Through this joint venture it is possible to sustain high-performance, improve the environmental impact, and reduce costs; all while doing so in a self-contained portable container. KDDI approached technology partners, such as GIGABYTE, to explore ways to bridge various disciplines to achieve the goal of an environmentally sustainable data center. GIGABYTE was keen to assist and had been monitoring and developing immersion cooling systems over the last decade.

Staring data centers in the face is one of their great challenges, and that is how to rectify the increasing power density in traditional data centers and deploy edge computing solutions. Companies are increasing reliant on cloud services and consumers expect fast streaming media and real-time results, but all of this adds work in the data center. Even if the power density reaches an acceptable balance with performance and cooling, can it be implemented in data centers with a higher consideration for the environment and operate more efficiently? That is the crux of the matter as more novel solutions must come out or the problem will only be compounded. Using liquid immersion cooling it is possible to achieve a PUE (power usage effectiveness) of 1.2-1.3, which is far better than the PUE of 1.7 found in air-cooled data centers today. PUE is an important metric to use as it determines the energy efficiency of a data center. If a data center is able to reach a PUE of 1.2-1.3 then it can reduce power consumption by 30-50%.

GIGABYTE is not new to this immersion cooling frontier and recently it was announced that a famous IC foundry worked with suppliers including GIGABYTE and 3M to create an immersion cooling solution (source). This solution was installed at the company’s fab where it is doing pilot runs and it is expected to make great reductions in power consumption, citing as much as 400 million kWh/year by 2030. For the various choices of efficient immersion cooling, GIGABYTE servers can be quickly modified to be in compliance with project requirements.