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There are quick release water cooling designs for the data center. But water cooling has many issues: the loop needs to be perfectly sealed as water is conducti

There are quick release water cooling designs for the data center. But water cooling has many issues: the loop needs to be perfectly sealed as water is conductive and will instantly destroy your very expensive servers in the case of a fault. Pumps are a moving part and are prone to failure. Everything needs to be manufactured to precise tolerances. Meanwhile immersion cooling is the opposite - Just build a tank and drop your stuff in it. Modern immersion cooling fluids aren't like mineral oil so you don't end up with components permanently coated in oil.

eternityforest 4y ago
At most, I would think it would destroy one server if there was major defect. But solenoid valves are pretty reliable. It's easy to imagine some absorbant material as a fallback, a negative pressure loop, and pressure/humidity sensors that could shut everything down within seconds of a minor leak. There's no pressure to push anything off it's connector, and in the event of anything failing and disconnecting in a major way, the loop starts draining the other way by atmospheric pressure. Water pumps are pretty cheap, you could have triple redundant pumps per rack for an irrelevant cost. Air pumps are also cheap. You could even enclose your connections to heat blocks in a second layer of slight negative pressure, that would both contain any drop-an-hour leaks that somehow happened, and funnel it to a humidity sensor. If they use anything like Fluorinert, I'm pretty sure a whole rack of this kind of tech could cost less than a single gallon of that stuff. I'm actually kind of surprised consumer water cooling setups aren't like this. It might be a pretty fun project, and you could probably use 3D printed parts depending on how much you trust the active controls.
- tlb 4y ago
  You should try building it. There’s a big market if you can make it reliable. Keep in mind there are other hot chips besides the CPU. Memory, network interfaces, and power supplies all need cooling too. Most systems are hybrid: water for the few hottest chips and air for everything else.
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    Honestly I probably would, but it would probably cost $100-$250 at minimum to prototype, and it seems rather difficult to find a company that would be interested in the design. I assume gaming PCs are where you'd start? I've never actually had a gaming desktop or anything similar, so I'm not sure what that market is like or if anyone would pay several hundred dollars for one, or if any of those companies would ever hire someone for that without a background in this stuff. I'm mostly in embedded controls and prop building, and have lots of incidental experience with water handling and compressed air, but I've never done anything related to data centers or anything significant with desktops.
    - xxs 4y ago
      >I've never actually had a gaming desktop The waterblock, just acrylic with some fittings, alone is in the 130 euro[0] retail prices. So, there is some market for enthusiast but it's not large, of course. [0]. https://www.ekwb.com/shop/water-blocks/cpu-blocks/velocity2 https://www.ekwb.com/shop/water-blocks/cpu-blocks/velocity2
- imtringued 4y ago
  It would be like optical fiber cables. Unless you hire a highly specialized technician with the right hardware you are not going to crimp your own optic fibers. You just buy factory crimped cables of the right length. In this case you would need to sell the whole kit already sealed by the factory to guarantee the absence of operator error. Perhaps the OEM could install the cooling system from the get go with high quality quick connect ports integrated into the case. Don't forget to polarize the damn connectors so that you can't mix up the inlet and outlet ports.
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's easy enough to do it yourself(Barb fittings are probably fine since this is slight negative pressure), but everyone would probably prefer not to risk the more-than-i-make-in-three-years server to a non-specialist. I was thinking to not even use separate inlets and outlets at all. The connectors would be 3-port in/out/vacuum air, with the vacuum port meant to be very slightly leaky. You'd wrap the whole entire connector in a silicone sleeve, so that any small leaks in the connector(If the negative pressure on the water itself failed) would be contained and sucked back through the vacuum hose and trigger shutdown. For a prototype you'd just 3D print some connectors and wrap them with tape, and let a mechanical engineer figure it out if your ever get to production, since poor quality, leaky parts are a good thing in a prototype, where the goal is to prove that the server stays dry even when things fail.

eternityforest 4y ago

At most, I would think it would destroy one server if there was major defect. But solenoid valves are pretty reliable. It's easy to imagine some absorbant material as a fallback, a negative pressure loop, and pressure/humidity sensors that could shut everything down within seconds of a minor leak. There's no pressure to push anything off it's connector, and in the event of anything failing and disconnecting in a major way, the loop starts draining the other way by atmospheric pressure. Water pumps are pretty cheap, you could have triple redundant pumps per rack for an irrelevant cost. Air pumps are also cheap. You could even enclose your connections to heat blocks in a second layer of slight negative pressure, that would both contain any drop-an-hour leaks that somehow happened, and funnel it to a humidity sensor. If they use anything like Fluorinert, I'm pretty sure a whole rack of this kind of tech could cost less than a single gallon of that stuff. I'm actually kind of surprised consumer water cooling setups aren't like this. It might be a pretty fun project, and you could probably use 3D printed parts depending on how much you trust the active controls.

tlb 4y ago
You should try building it. There’s a big market if you can make it reliable. Keep in mind there are other hot chips besides the CPU. Memory, network interfaces, and power supplies all need cooling too. Most systems are hybrid: water for the few hottest chips and air for everything else.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  Honestly I probably would, but it would probably cost $100-$250 at minimum to prototype, and it seems rather difficult to find a company that would be interested in the design. I assume gaming PCs are where you'd start? I've never actually had a gaming desktop or anything similar, so I'm not sure what that market is like or if anyone would pay several hundred dollars for one, or if any of those companies would ever hire someone for that without a background in this stuff. I'm mostly in embedded controls and prop building, and have lots of incidental experience with water handling and compressed air, but I've never done anything related to data centers or anything significant with desktops.
  - xxs 4y ago
    >I've never actually had a gaming desktop The waterblock, just acrylic with some fittings, alone is in the 130 euro[0] retail prices. So, there is some market for enthusiast but it's not large, of course. [0]. https://www.ekwb.com/shop/water-blocks/cpu-blocks/velocity2 https://www.ekwb.com/shop/water-blocks/cpu-blocks/velocity2
imtringued 4y ago
It would be like optical fiber cables. Unless you hire a highly specialized technician with the right hardware you are not going to crimp your own optic fibers. You just buy factory crimped cables of the right length. In this case you would need to sell the whole kit already sealed by the factory to guarantee the absence of operator error. Perhaps the OEM could install the cooling system from the get go with high quality quick connect ports integrated into the case. Don't forget to polarize the damn connectors so that you can't mix up the inlet and outlet ports.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's easy enough to do it yourself(Barb fittings are probably fine since this is slight negative pressure), but everyone would probably prefer not to risk the more-than-i-make-in-three-years server to a non-specialist. I was thinking to not even use separate inlets and outlets at all. The connectors would be 3-port in/out/vacuum air, with the vacuum port meant to be very slightly leaky. You'd wrap the whole entire connector in a silicone sleeve, so that any small leaks in the connector(If the negative pressure on the water itself failed) would be contained and sucked back through the vacuum hose and trigger shutdown. For a prototype you'd just 3D print some connectors and wrap them with tape, and let a mechanical engineer figure it out if your ever get to production, since poor quality, leaky parts are a good thing in a prototype, where the goal is to prove that the server stays dry even when things fail.