Data center cooling essentials

What is data center cooling?

Data center cooling regulates temperature to optimize IT equipment functions. Essential cooling mechanisms dissipate heat and prevent overheating to extend equipment lifetimes, ensure uptime and prevent data loss.

Why is data center cooling important?

Efficient data center cooling improves equipment reliability by mitigating the risk of premature hardware degradation from excessive heat and preventing disruptions and data loss. By maintaining appropriate temperatures, cooling optimizes IT infrastructure output and prevents performance dips and operational inefficiencies. Additionally, it enhances energy efficiency, reducing both energy costs and environmental impact. Scalable cooling solutions support the expansion of data centers and enable increased power densities while ensuring performance and reliability.

How does data center cooling work?

Data center cooling aims to remove heat from temperature-sensitive components and dissipate that heat safely elsewhere. Traditional data center cooling systems employ air-based technologies to circulate cool air to remove heat from servers. However, air cooling cannot keep pace as server densities and processing power escalate, prompting development of innovative liquid cooling solutions. Data center liquid cooling works in the same manner as air cooling, but its higher heat capacity makes liquid systems ideal for next generation data centers.

Traditional air-based cooling systems utilize server rack fans and air conditioning units to circulate cool air throughout the data center. Air-based systems rely on heat sinks to transfer heat from processors and other devices into the air. Fans and blowers force air through these heat sinks then circulate it to air conditioning units to cool the air and reject heat outside of the data center.

Many data centers can effectively use air cooling systems. More advanced equipment may require Eaton’s extreme air cooling to handle higher heat loads. While Eaton’s extreme air cooling systems offer advanced cooling performance, they are still unable to meet the latest server density and processing power specifications for high power compute and artificial intelligence processors.

Data center liquid cooling solutions actively absorb and dissipate heat from servers at the blade or chip level, providing a more efficient alternative to air cooling. By efficiently managing heat at the source, these innovative systems not only maximize compute density but also minimize the physical footprint within data centers, leading to a tangible enhancement of data center performance and energy efficiency.

Integrated liquid cooling systems within server racks efficiently manage heat across multiple heat sources or servers within a chassis. These advanced data center cooling systems integrate in-rack coolant distribution units (CDUs) or liquid cooling loops with existing facility water cooling systems and cool the blade or chip level. This enables increased computing and power density within the same footprint.

Eaton’s data center cooling solutions efficiently cool, seal, insulate and shield some of the world’s most demanding data centers. Our innovative cooling solutions enhance performance efficiency, optimize resource utilization, maximize energy recovery and increase reliability at all system levels.

Eaton’s liquid cooling systems lead the industry in compactness, sustainability and efficiency, offering superior cooling for high-density heat loads. This cutting-edge technology enables exceptional heat transfer and dissipation, empowering unmatched compute performance and power density levels. Eaton’s liquid cooling solutions, including direct liquid cooling (DLC) are tailored for systems, enclosures, devices and components. Our expertise spans diverse applications, from large-scale server systems in hyperscale data centers to compact cold plates for direct chip cooling. With over two decades of proven reliability and continuous improvements fueled by real world data, we offer worry-free, leak-free solutions that undergo 100% in-line thermal testing, ensuring the highest reliability in liquid cooling technology.

Silicon, CPUs and GPUs continually expand horizons of processor power but are constrained by thermal factors. Eaton’s diverse technology portfolio seamlessly integrates liquid, immersion, two-phase and air-cooling innovations. Tailored solutions maximize efficiency for each system, unlock full capabilities and drive performance differentiation for every application regardless if you are retrofitting an existing data center or building a new advanced data center. Our partnership with server and data center designers empowers us to custom design processor cooling solutions for direct-to-chip cooling that is tailored to their installations.

Eaton has decades of experience and expertise in pioneering and manufacturing data center cooling solutions. We leverage our rich heritage in liquid cooling and extreme air cooling to design innovative data center cooling solutions, integrating silicon and Processor Cooling for top-tier performance, reliability and energy efficiency.

Whether you require in-row cooling for multiple server racks or direct-to-chip cooling, we’ve got you covered. Our engineering and material science expertise enables us to design custom cooling solutions for specific data center types. To learn more about our thermal management solutions or to discuss your project needs, schedule a consultation with our experts.