LiquidStack, one of the first major players in the immersion cooling business, has entered the single-phase liquid cooling market with an expansion of its DataTank product portfolio.
Immersion cooling is the process of dunking the motherboard in a nonconductive liquid to cool it. It’s primarily centered around the CPU, but in this case, it involves the entire motherboard including the memory and other chips.
Immersion cooling has been around for a while, but it has been something of a fringe technology. With server equipment growing hotter and denser, immersion has begun to creep into the mainstream.
Immersion comes in two forms: single phase and dual phase, or two phase. In a single-phase environment, the tank is open and readily accessible. The fluid has a high boiling point, so even under full load, the hardware does not get so hot as to cause the cooling fluid to boil off. The immersion fluid is cooled through heat exchangers, such as radiators.
In a dual-phase/two-phase system, the tank is closed and sealed. The immersion fluid has a much lower boiling point and readily boils off. The vapor collects in the lid of the tank and then drops back into the tank, and the liquid is cooled through thermal dispersion.
Up to now, LiquidStack has only offered two-phase DataTanks.
