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Comment by emushack | Hacker News Reader

I would like to see more data centers make use of large-scale Oil Immersion-Cooling. I feel like the fresh water use for cooling is a huge issue.

https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10101126

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There are various data center cooling techniques, and not all of them use water. As a result, water usage, and water usage efficiency, vary wildly:

https://dgtlinfra.com/data-center-water-usage/

https://datacenters.microsoft.com/sustainability/efficiency/

Isn't water just the transfer medium between the server and the heat exchangers outside? How would changing that to oil help?

It wouldn't really help.

Oil might be able to carry more heat but it's more expensive to use.

Oil immersion is something nerds like to think is amazing but it's just a pain in the ass for negligible benefits. Imagine the annoyance of doing maintenance.

Wouldn't it be no different but your hands get a little oily? Say you take out a ram stick, oil goes into the empty dimm slot, but so what because its displaced again when you put in the new ram stick.

True, but water, especially fresh water, is used in so many applications. I don't have hard numbers on this because I'm not THAT big of a nerd, but intuitively, I would think that if we can find alternatives to water, that would free up some fresh water resources, for I don't know, growing food? This is actually a major issue in my area - A data center is being built right now, and competing with municipalities for fresh water. Maybe they don't have to?

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