Nvidia's latest trick for cooling its data center hardware is... hot water? 'Hot liquid cooling' is warmer than a hot tub, but apparently does the job pretty well

Date:
Thu, 23 Jul 2026 23:30:00 +0000

Description:
Nvidia's newest AI servers are cooled by water hotter than a hot tub: 45C going in, 55C coming out, while skipping out on fans altogether

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Nvidia's Rubin-generation AI servers run coolant that is often hotter than a hot tub as it enters a closed loop at up to 45C and leaves at around 55C, with no performance penalty in
tow The principle leveraged here is that of a temperature gradient with
server chips still running hotter than the coolant, allowing heat transfer to occur seamlessly The approach allows Nvidia to roughly conserve 2.6 million gallons per megawatt annually to near zero and could save a 50MW site over $4 million a year in cost Nvidia 's Rubin generation is the first of its kind in multiple ways, but the one that sticks out possibly is the fact that it is 100% liquid cooled, implementing it as a core design feature at a platform level with every single chip and networking component covered by a closed loop.

The reference design by Nvidia aims to allow for AI factories that
effectively consume zero water by implementing a closed loop circuit that
does not leverage evaporative water cooling 99% of the time. The approach
goes a step further by potentially eliminating industrial chiller plants from the equation by using liquid cooling where the temperature is as much as 45 degrees Celsius for coolant entering the system and approximately 55 degrees Celsius while exiting it. Latest Videos From Watch full video here: A numbers game for a data center that crunches them at an industrial level Nvidia's approach is not the first of its kind in terms of thermal design or implementation; however, IBM beat it by 16 years , using 60-degree coolant to cool its prototype supercomputer at ETH Zurich.

The premise was the same: a much lower carbon footprint, significantly lower power consumption, and a loop that is filled once and left alone. What Nvidia adds is scale its Vera Rubin-based DSX design extends the approach across an entire facility rather than a single machine. You may like Nvidias direct-to-chip liquid cooling is a sustainability and a performance win Cooling just became the most strategic choice in AI infrastructure Saltwater cooling system could turn data centers into clean water producers

"The NVIDIA DSX reference design for AI factories has zero water consumption we have eliminated massive amounts of power usage and pretty much all water usage," said Ali Heydari, Nvidia's director of data center cooling and infrastructure.

The coolant is a 3:1 water-to-propylene-glycol mix, and it pulls heat away from chips running far hotter than the coolant itself with ease. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting
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The savings are not only water-based: industrial chiller plants cut their energy costs by roughly 4% for every degree they raise their operating temperature, and Nvidia estimates that a 50-megawatt hyperscale facility
could save over $4 million annually in cooling-related energy and water costs by adopting its design.

With cooling historically accounting for as much as 40% of a data center's total power bill, Nvidia's approach is ambitious, but it is one that should pay for itself quickly eliminating server fans altogether while allowing chillers to run only where necessary, and at considerably lower power than a loop demanding colder coolant.

It must be noted that DSX is a reference design: a set of best practices for building an AI factory, not a census of what the industry has actually built, where many designs still consume very large amounts of water even as AI data centers continue to pop up in drought-affected regions of the US .

Nvidia might seem to be championing a "greener" AI data center for the
future, at least in its own designs, but that is only part of the story and the part it leaves out is a little less flattering. Nvidia did not adopt hot-water cooling because it is elegant, or green, or clever, though it is
all three. It adopted it because its accelerators became so power-dense that moving air across them was no longer physically viable, and once you are committed to liquid cooling, running it hot is simply the efficient way to do it.

The sustainability win is real, and it is a consequence of a thermal problem Nvidia created for itself by building the most power-dense chips in the industry. Hot water isn't the trick. It's the bill coming due, paid in the most efficient currency available. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/nvidias-latest-trick-for-cooling-its-data-center -hardware-is-hot-water-hot-liquid-cooling-is-warmer-than-a-hot-tub-but-apparen tly-does-the-job-pretty-well


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