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45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

blogs.nvidia.com

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Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#171

Post by pdoege »

amluto wrote: post #29
ramon156 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming.. the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating

I’ve been to datacenters, but not the huuuge ones people seem to talk about in the context of AI. They are noisy inside (due to air cooling, which is largely avoided by the tech in the OP), but they’re entirely unremarkable outside compared to any other commercial or industrial building. Computers are not inherently loud, nor is power conversion. Power plants are all over, even in populated areas. They’re not so bad…

When I was building data enters in populated areas there were regulations for noise, visual signature, power usage, and etc. It looks like a lot of these newer sites are in low regulation areas. Which is great for profit margin, and not so great for neighbors.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#172

Post by voxelghost »

why_at wrote: post #72

Maybe I'm being dumb, but I don't understand what the innovation is here. I get that they're using liquid coolant at higher than usual temperatures, but why couldn't they do that before? Most of the comparison in the article is for air cooled datacenters but what about other liquid cooled ones? Surely in all the previous datacenters that have been designed there has been someone doing the math and determining what te…

Ai slop from Nvidia, who would have thunk.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#173

Post by juneyi »

annzabelle wrote: post #157
ramon156 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming.. the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating

I grew up in Northern Virginia, (of AWS US-East-1, MAE-East, and Equinix fame), where there are more data centers than anywhere else in the world, and I never heard organized opposition to them until the last couple of years. They were mainly viewed as a way for Loudoun County to build their industrial tax base without the downsides of having industrial workers, and allowed them to consistently lower property taxes w…

i'm confused on the humming part, i've driven by them many times and they're just...large, sorta ugly, buildings. but that's really it. i wonder if i walked up to a building i'd hear the humming. quite surprised to learn that they emit a humming that bothers nearby folks

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#174

Post by audunw »

juneyi wrote: post #173
annzabelle wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Northern Virginia, (of AWS US-East-1, MAE-East, and Equinix fame), where there are more data centers than anywhere else in the world, and I never heard organized opposition to them until the last couple of years. They were mainly viewed as a way for Loudoun County to build their industrial tax base without the downsides of having industrial workers, and allowed them to consistently lower property taxes w…

i'm confused on the humming part, i've driven by them many times and they're just...large, sorta ugly, buildings. but that's really it. i wonder if i walked up to a building i'd hear the humming. quite surprised to learn that they emit a humming that bothers nearby folks

Maybe those complaints are for datacenters using gas turbines for power. I think some of the recent ones (xAIs?) was built without sufficient power from the grid.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#176

Post by hommelix »

kayo_20211030 wrote: post #60
notrealyme123 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The university where i studied uses high temperature cooling since a few years. The weather on Germany ranges to quite high temperatures, but according to the tech stuff they only need active (as in AC) cooling for the higher end of the 30 degrees. The technology is quite fascinating. https://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2024_038_kit-supercompute...

I lived in Munich many years ago, but if the temperature ever went to the high thirties for more than a day we'd expect the end of the world :-)

Come now to south of Germany. We are in the middle of a 10 days heatwave at 35 degC on average.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#177

Post by CamperBob2 »

lstodd wrote: post #145
CamperBob2 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if they put them in the middle of nowhere, I don't see why there's a problem. What I don't understand is putting these things in populated areas.

Would you like to work in the middle of nowhere?

If they can be deployed in low-earth orbit with nobody working on them, they can be deployed 20 miles east of Bumfuck, Nebraska with nobody working on them.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#178

Post by al_borland »

juneyi wrote: post #173
annzabelle wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Northern Virginia, (of AWS US-East-1, MAE-East, and Equinix fame), where there are more data centers than anywhere else in the world, and I never heard organized opposition to them until the last couple of years. They were mainly viewed as a way for Loudoun County to build their industrial tax base without the downsides of having industrial workers, and allowed them to consistently lower property taxes w…

i'm confused on the humming part, i've driven by them many times and they're just...large, sorta ugly, buildings. but that's really it. i wonder if i walked up to a building i'd hear the humming. quite surprised to learn that they emit a humming that bothers nearby folks

I haven’t been in an AI data center, but have been in several others, and worked in a smaller one. I never really hear anything until I open the door to a computer room… and I’m one of those people who is bothered by the electrical noise in my walls.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#179

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

lrasinen wrote: post #21
amluto wrote: post #12

This opens up an interesting synergy: district heating. 45C is low but not unworkable for a district heating loop, and a data center might be able to make a nice pitch to a community if the data center offers to provide heat to a district heating system for free. This brings the value to the local community of a nearby datacenter up from near zero to potentially a few million dollars per year. Summer is still an issu…

Microsoft's already building data centers hooked up to district heating (Espoo and Kirkkonummi, Finland). Heatpumps are amazing. (Seasonal heat storage is also a thing, Espoo's neighbours have tens of GWh of storage, with a new 90 GWh cavern in the works. Not sure if the systems are interlinked.)

Don't forget XTX Markets in Kajaani! At least last I heard. Free heating for an entire city in exchange for being allowed to build out a data center is a pretty good deal.

Re: 45°C cooling design cuts data center water use to near zero

#180

Post by amiga386 »

annzabelle wrote: post #157
ramon156 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live near a datacenter? Property value goes down, constant humming.. the way we heat up the earth right now, i don't think you have to worry about heating

I grew up in Northern Virginia, (of AWS US-East-1, MAE-East, and Equinix fame), where there are more data centers than anywhere else in the world, and I never heard organized opposition to them until the last couple of years. They were mainly viewed as a way for Loudoun County to build their industrial tax base without the downsides of having industrial workers, and allowed them to consistently lower property taxes w…

You got good data centres, and their construction and operation were likely regulated.

The problem is that apparently you can just ignore that by building in poor places that won't hold you accountable and perhaps don't even have the regulations. If they do, just don't comply with them. Then your gas turbines can be as loud as you like, nobody will stop you. There's this one weird trick where you can pretend your generators aren't turned on, but they are, and they pollute badly. Nobody will call you out on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJT2JeDCyw

Also you can take people's drinking water to cool your data centre, and promise a water recycling plant, and then just not build it.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/05/xai-water-reuse-pro...

What I forgot to mention is this one weird trick only works if you're a turbo-bastard with an enormous bank account, and the government of the poor place thinks it's in line for a payday.

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