In Reply to: AI and sustainability posted by TheHappyBurgermeister on September 24, 2024 at 19:10:17
Water cooled servers are usually done with a chiller and it's a closed loop system. In bigger systems like a data center they typically also have cooling towers that "pre cool" the water before it gets to the chiller, it makes the chillers more efficient.
So yeah it does use water but if done correctly it's in a closed loop you're using the same water over and over. You have to treat the water otherwise you get fungus and mold growing in the tower, that's how Legionaires disease happened.
The cooling thing is the biggest issue with data centers. Everyone that makes servers insist the air has to be treated before it enters the room because otherwise it would be too dirty, or have too much or not enough humidity and would impact the performance of the servers. The problem with that is it makes it much harder to just use outside air when it's cold.
I had so many conversations with HVAC guys over the years in my job asking can we just use outside air in the wintertime to cool the computer room, the answer is almost always no, they literally install units that do NOT take outside air because IT guys and server guys insist the air has to be treated. You can run the outside air through filters but the generally accepted way to do it is you cannot use outside air.
So either servers have to be made that CAN use outside air to cool, or they have to make a better way to filter that air so you can convince IT people it's safe to do.
I should add I worked at a company for 2.5 years that had chillers and a cooling tower to cool labs. Everyone in the company insisted we couldn't use outside air, it wasn't clean enough. Then one guy, my boss, told me just make the change and use outside air I want to see what happens. We were in that building for 2.5 years and nobody but he, the CEO and I knew we were doing that. Never had a problem and saved THOUSANDS of dollars in cooling costs.
Google is doing all sorts of stuff with AI data centers to cool them with less electricity and I know that's specifically one of the things they're trying to do, use outside air in cool temps as much as they can.