Microsoft’s Tiny Data Center Liquid Cooling Experiment Is a Big Deal

[FlyingPenguin]

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/pow ... t-big-deal

[Pugsley]

So the big trick here is the engineering on the chemical end for the coolant.

[FlyingPenguin]

Yeah. It has to have the right boiling point, so it self circulates. The Cray 2 supercomputer used a flourocarbon coolant also, but it had a huge cooling unit attached to it. What's novel here is no circulating pumps or heat exchangers.

[Pugsley]

And the fluid does not harm PCBs or components.

[FlyingPenguin]

Yeah non conducting. Inert non-conducting fluorocarbons have been around a while.

Below is the Cray 2 super computer, circa 1985, on the left, and the associated Fluorinert-cooling “waterfall” on the right, which I have to say looks like a Buck Rogers TV show prop more than a $17.5 million computer



I have vivid memories of this photo in some science magazine, showing Seymour Cray next to a protype Cray 2 module, just literally submerged in a fish tank full of fluorocarbon fluid.

[normalicy]

Funny, I just finished watching an episode of Halt & Catch Fire where they are using liquid cooling to overclock.