4 ms·
What about heat transfer? At least in a moderate, dry climate (whereas SP is hot/humid) there’s a natural benefit to having a high surface area to volume ratio,
by szvsw 2y ago
What about heat transfer? At least in a moderate, dry climate (whereas SP is hot/humid) there’s a natural benefit to having a high surface area to volume ratio, favoring wide/flat spaces, from the perspective of heat rejection. I’m not sure to what extent space cooling is actually a controlling factor in DC design, or what the typical strategies are (for instance I assume there are lots of new systems which make use of geothermal cooling). Anyways, just curious if you have any insight on that.
- dweekly 2y agoPassive heat rejection from the exterior of the datacenter was never going to be the way to go, even with a short, wide datacenter -- external evaporative cooling towers are the way to go. Liquid cooling for the core is already best practice for high power density racks, which gives you the ability to separate how you solve for cooling and how densely you can pack your gear.
- szvsw 2y agoYeah cooling towers seems like the obvious choice, thanks for confirming! I’m sure there are some other more exciting designs that hook datacenters up to prosumer/mesh topology ambient-temp district heating/cooling loops - or there should be if there aren’t! - but what you described makes perfect sense.