Green revolution cooling
grcooling.com
grcooling.com
My Dad is a radio man and has been around high-powered electronics for most of his career. He explained the pros and cons of liquid cooling this way:
Pros.
1. Theoretically very efficient.
2. Amazing equipment densities.
Cons.
1. Congratulations! You are now a plumber.
Even purified water is murderously destructive. He told me stories about replacing piping in a water cooled electronics room. Every few months they would have to shut down, drain the system and replace a pipe corner. The vortices of water going around a 90 degree bend caused enough cavitation to gouge out visible shapes on the inside of the pipes. After a few months the copper pipes would crack and leak on the electronics.
Immersion in inert liquids is fine so far as it goes, but you're still going to be a plumber.
Indeed, water is more destructive to materials than many other liquids. And deionized water is the worst. It turns out that you have to explicitly make deionized water for a reason: Many of the things that touch water want to dissolve in it! And the fewer ions of, say, copper that are already in your water, the faster a rod of copper dissolves when you dip it into that water.
Think of water the way you think about the blood of the aliens in Aliens – only on a slightly slower timescale – and you'll realize why boat maintenance is better thought of as a lifestyle rather than as a series of repairs.
As for boating ... I vaguely recall the joke that it's easier and more fun just to pour cash into the sea than to get a boat.
This is the first I've seen with many machines submerged.
I'd be interested to see the results of long term testing.
I'm guessing that big data centres avoid this because it's just so messy; at what point do cost savings from cooling over-ride inconvenience of dripping oil everywhere.
A final nitpick: the website is a bit frustrating, and could do with some better design, and much better photographs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZmm7P1mPZs
no need to shut down the server. you pull it out and swap the parts (for front-accessible hotswap HDDs you won't even have to pull it out). cabling is designed to accommodate that.
i can imagine, though, that "pulling out" a 4U storage box fully loaded with hdds may become a bit strenuous.
I think they need to build a simple pulley or hydraulic lift system for these.
"95% Less Cooling Power"
It took me a while to figure out that it uses 95% less power, not that is is 95% less effective.
THis could be a bit more clear.
This is exactly where more conventional and less sticky methods can achieve good results, so I'm skeptical of the value.
PS: 40c = 104f and most cpu's are fine at 50c most are still ok at 60+c. If the outside temperature is more reasonable you can often get away with passively cooling water systems where air needs to be actively cooled. You can also combine this with other methods aka if a local lake can give you water below 30c most of the year you might be able to use a passive cooling system with water even if you would need to actively cool air.
Green Revolution Cooling supplied Midas Green Tech with their setup.
Wonder if they can control the pressure to the point you can seal it... or if the seal itself incorporates an air flow system.
How complex can this sealing system be while still allowing the disks to fit in the bays?
Some heaters use a similar approach to limit corrosion. http://www.westank.com/bladder-tanks.php
Does anyone have any statistics on what contributes the most heat? I'm assuming power supply and processor/GPU are the worst offenders.
Edit: yup, the drives are wrapped:
> First, our technicians remove server fans and put them aside for future use or reverse-modification at a later date. Then, each hard drive is encapsulated using GRC’s proprietary hard drive sealing system. Finally, the CPU thermal grease is replaced with a non-soluble foil.
Fire suppression is going to be fun.