

Super-cooling liquid cuts 97% off data centre cooling costs - iProject
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/28/wet_servers_cut_cooling_costs_research_leeds_university/

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kragen
It would be nice if there was a page that covered this without (a) calling us
"boffins" and (b) missing the major point that the coolant boils and (c) being
full of factual errors, as you'd expect from an article that uses the term
"boffin". (After all, if you're smart enough to get the basic facts right on a
story like this, you're probably a "boffin" yourself.)

But [http://blog.iceotope.com/2012/03/iceotope-liquid-cools-
cabin...](http://blog.iceotope.com/2012/03/iceotope-liquid-cools-cabinets-
and.html) omits the crucial detail that the Novec boils inside your server,
which is why it can work so well, and
[http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/NA-
DataCenters/D...](http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/NA-
DataCenters/DataCenters/AboutUs/3MInnovation/) of course doesn't mention
Iceotope at all.

(Thanks to uvdiv for digging up the actual information!)

~~~
elemeno
"boffin" is British slang for a scientist/researcher. It's got generally
positive connotations indicating that the said person is smart.

Since The Register is a British site, and is also known for often being
somewhat tongue in cheek, there really isn't anything to read in to their use
of the word.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin>

~~~
kragen
From the refs on that page,
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/sep/24/scientist...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/sep/24/scientists-
boffin-stereotype)

"There is little that irritates scientists more than the idea of the "boffin".
This century-old meme has at least two flavours: the befuddled, bespectacled,
bad-hair-day (or no-hair-day) man, socially inept but somewhat cuddly (think
Doc in Back To The Future); and there is the more sinister iteration: the
equally dishevelled but cold, arrogant and/or mad male meddler, bent on no
good (think Rotwang in Metropolis).

"Neither of these versions is remotely flattering, and neither bears any
resemblance to reality."

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uvdiv
More details:

(press release) [http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/NA-
DataCenters/D...](http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/NA-
DataCenters/DataCenters/AboutUs/3MInnovation/)

(technical data)
[http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/3MNovec/Home/Pro...](http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/3MNovec/Home/ProductCatalog/?PC_7_RJH9U5230OOA50IEKHCMDN11H0000000_nid=VJK791MG8CbeQQBXSJ1LVVgl)

It's a phase-change system (the coolant boils). That's what the article means
by "a thousand times better at conducting heat than water": it absorbs orders
of magnitude more heat because of the phase change. It boils 49 °C at
atmospheric pressure, cold enough for electronics.

They claim it doesn't need fans: the boiling is enough to maintain natural
circulation (convection) from the server to the heat sink.

~~~
jacques_chester
Can you explain how this is different from fluorinert?

~~~
uvdiv
I have no knowledge on this subject, but

\- According to wikipedia [0], fluorinert as used in the Cray was a single-
phase coolant (no boiling). It needed fluid pumps and chilled water, at high
energy cost; this phase-change solution avoids both.

\- Wikipedia claims fluorinert has a very long atmospheric lifetime and high
global-warming potential. [1] 3M claims this new fluid is destroyed by
sunlight [2], and doesn't have the same problems.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2#Packed_circuit_boards_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-2#Packed_circuit_boards_and_new_design_ideas)

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert#Toxicity>

[2] (PDF)
[http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=66666UF6EV...](http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=66666UF6EVsSyXTtNxf2oxf_EVtQEVs6EVs6EVs6E666666--&fn=Novec649_6003926.pdf)

(The "M.J. Molina" in the datasheet is the Nobelist and co-discoverer of the
ozone hole)

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ddon
Interesting coincident, just yesterday i watched a Russian tv show about dry
water and they show that it doesn't conduct electricity and it has a low
boiling temperature.

<http://youtu.be/WIVt66RSWNU?t=9m31s> (sorry, only in Russian)

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davidw
Sorry for being a bit off topic, but "super-cooling liquid shaves" sounds like
the intro to a Gillette commercial.

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ScotterC
Phase change sounds a lot cooler then what the article was trying to put
forth.

Dielectric liquid cooled computers have been around a long time. I even did my
capstone project my senior year taking a 3M dielectric fluid and attempting to
make a liquid cooled laptop.

What's always forgotten is you have to move the heat farther then you think.
Dielectric fluids are great for getting the heat off the cpu but then where do
you move it to? In my project we tried to use the back of the laptop monitor
to be a large surface area for natural convention. Boiling is much cooler
(literally).

Laptop of course wouldn't work out because imagine trying to manufacture those
things at scale! Also, these fluids when they evaporate aren't exactly kind to
the atmosphere.

------
zokier
You still need to dump the heat somewhere, no matter how efficiently you get
it out of your server/cpu.

~~~
Geee
In colder climates heat is used for heating, you know? It's not 'dumped'
anywhere. District heating networks are already in place in most countries,
and it's trivial to connect the server farm in the heat network, possibly
replacing a fossil fuel plant.

~~~
eru
Heat isn't equal to heat. Server farms produce relatively low temperature
heat, which is almost useless.

Look up entropy and thermodynamics for more background.

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Vivtek
Odd word choice - 97% isn't really a shave.

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ilitirit
Reminds me of when they first demoed CFC's on the program "Beyond 2000". Turns
out that stuff ate the Ozone Layer. Makes you wonder about the unintended
negative side-effects about new discoveries.

~~~
adventured
Makes me wonder about the unintended positive side effects of new discoveries.

~~~
Gravityloss
Unfortunately, those are probably much less likely directly...

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ccarter84
Awesome - this could be great for helping reduce cooling related energy use /
slowing global warming, but control of a relatively benign chemical will be
hard to force since and it's 280-320x worse than CO2 in terms of Global
Warming effects if released....per MSDS
[http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=SSSSSuUn_z...](http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=SSSSSuUn_zu8l00xl8mBm8mePv70k17zHvu9lxtD7SSSSSS--)

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JimmaDaRustla
Sounds very cumbersome to have hardware adapted to use this, also expensive.

I'd still like to see something like this for server cooling:
[http://www.extremetech.com/computing/131656-the-fanless-
heat...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/131656-the-fanless-heatsink-
silent-dust-immune-and-almost-ready-for-prime-time)

~~~
rkroondotnet
I think the idea behind showing an iPhone dunked into it is that the cost of
adaptation is: buy vat.

Even if your only change was to place the server into the liquid you get a
nice bump in efficiency of cooling by having the thermal bulk of the liquid
transferring heat quickly away from the hot spots. The liquid itself would
then cool on contact with the air, the much larger surface area acting kind of
like a big radiator.

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tbrownaw
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe>

This is better because... there's no per-server hardware to get the heat to
the cooler? Just a mostly-sealed room (or tank) with one inlet pipe and one
outlet vent?

~~~
skore
Uhm, that just moves the heat to another place... usually rather closeby. Not
really a solution for datacenters (although they are used there, too,
sometimes - but just to move the heat slightly further away from components so
the main cooling can get to them). I suppose you could build them longer than
you usually see them these days, but that would make them quite a lot more
expensive.

~~~
tbrownaw
Couldn't the cold end of one be attached to the hot end of another? I was
thinking have a large one next to each rack, where the cold end goes to
wherever the condenser for this system would be and the hot end connects to
the cold ends of smaller pipes going to each server.

I'm assuming that tanks full of presumably patented special-purpose liquid
would be rather expensive, and that sealed partially-evacuated piping ought to
be somewhat less so.

~~~
skore
Rather than assuming, why don't you check out their website (linked somewhere
else in this topic)?

As for chaining up heat pipes... not really sure how to respond to that.

~~~
tbrownaw
Because I assumed that this would be "call us to negotiate a price", which
doesn't exactly help. And looking at the posted links that seems to be
correct.

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PrashanthOzone
HOpe this brings in new found joy to hosted SAAS/Cloud players who are
competing with tight margins

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geori
Brings new meaning to the term wet-ware.

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nphase
How is this different than dunking your machine in mineral oil?

~~~
speedyrev
It's a refrigerant. Boiling point is 40C at atmospheric pressure.

