Air cooling solutions for datacenter servers

DIGITIMES Research observes that the construction of new-generation datacenters is highlighting the growing importance of cooling solutions, especially in the pursuit of higher performance and optimized power usage effectiveness (PUE).

Amid the fast-growing demand for generative artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications, traditional air-cooling heat dissipation solutions are gradually coming to bottlenecks, while 3D VC (vapor chamber), which has a heat dissipation efficiency of nearly 1.5 times that of traditional air-cooling solutions, is more appealing.

The rise of HPC and AI has brought more challenges to datacenters. Among them, how to effectively dissipate heat is the most critical. Major datacenter operators will have to tackle issues arising from high server density, capacity expansion, energy saving, and growing demand for HPC.

• Introduction

• Surging cooling demand

• Challenges from HPC and AI

• Table 1: Four major factors to raise datacenter heat dissipation

• Large-scale datacenter

• Chart 1: Global datacenter average PUE, 2007-2023

• Chart 2: Average PUE of major large datacenters, 2023

• Generative AI

• Chart 3: TDP of mainstream CPUs, 2008-2026 (w)

• 3D vapor chamber

• Table 2: Traditional air cooling solution diagrams

• Heat dissipation

• Table 3: Comparisons among three major air-cooling solutions

• Chart 4: Air cooling efficiency and server height, (w)

• Summary