Advice needed: liquid cooling for CG rendering

#1

Hi CGS,

This is Charles Zien, Director of Marketing at LiquidCool Solutions, which has patented a unique method for liquid cooling electronic components. We currently design servers for data centers, but are looking to expand into other niches.

CG rendering is one of the areas we are looking into, so we are posting here in search of advice from the community as to whether this would be a good application for our technology and how we might about commercializing it.

LCS employs submersion cooling, a cost-efficient technology that eliminates fans and substantially reduces the amount of energy needed to cool IT components. Liquid immersion cooling exposes components directly to a dielectric liquid coolant.

Our technology reduces cooling costs by up to 98% and has on average a 75% smaller footprint compared than an air-cooled data center. LCS coolant has 1400 times more heat capacity than an equal volume of air, making it a far more effective at transporting heat. Using our patented Directed Flow system to circulate fluid through a sealed server chassis, coolant is constantly flowing through the system, maintaining optimal stability and reducing power-to-cool by 98%.

Unlike water, the coolant LCS uses does not carry an electric charge and is completely safe to use with any electronic component. Since all components are immersed in fluid, they are isolated from the outside environment, so they can be operated anywhere and component lifetime is extended substantially. Using liquid instead of air, the heat is easy to transport and recycle, in order to heat a home or building for example.

I would be very interested to hear that community’s thoughts on whether this technology could ease any particular pain point, or if you have any other advice as to whether this would be a good use case.

Thanks a lot for your help, and I look forward to hearing everybody’s comments!

#2

“Your unique patented method” does not eliminate fans. You still have to get rid of the heat from the liquid some where/how and with data-centers, that is probably via large-radiators on the roof. So this system, in its current form, can only ever be used with data-centers.

Fans are simple and in a data-center, no one cares that they are loud. Fan-failure is detectable and in a data-center they are “Hot swapable”.
Your liquid-system will require pumps. Are they hot-swapable?

Your liquid-system will leak. It could be catastrophic-failure, or it could merely be through evaporation. How do you detect a reduction in cooling-performance? Its one system for numerous servers, how do you diagnose problems?

#3

Thanks for the reply sd3d; I understand your skepticism.

“Your unique patented method” does not eliminate fans. You still have to get rid of the heat from the liquid some where/how and with data-centers, that is probably via large-radiators on the roof. So this system, in its current form, can only ever be used with data-centers.

This is a fair point. With air cooling, those radiators and fans are only practical to set up in a large-scale setting. But our system allows for much smaller deployments. A simple fan-coil system will do the trick. It can be self-contained in a single rack, or the heat can be recycled into the building. Since the fluid can be as warm as 45C, the amount of cooling needed is substantially less. We have been able to operate our systems outside in a desert environment without issue.

Your liquid-system will require pumps. Are they hot-swapable?

Yes, of course. We have redundancy built into all our systems.

Your liquid-system will leak. It could be catastrophic-failure, or it could merely be through evaporation.

Fair point. Many of our competitors have these issues but we do not for a few reasons:

[ul]
[li]Our sealed chassis is extruded from aluminum, requiring no welds and making a leak an extremely unlikely scenario. Coolant does not come into contact with air at any point.
[/li][li]The coolant we use has very low volatility, unlike 3M Novec or similar coolants used by competitors it will not evaporate while the unit is being serviced.
[/li][/ul]

How do you detect a reduction in cooling-performance? Its one system for numerous servers, how do you diagnose problems?

Software tools can be used to monitor individual units. The bottom line is problems are a lot less likely to occur with our technology because most hardware issues are caused by components coming into contact with the external environment. Components are like new after several years of operation.

#4

hmmm long post but how do you know about fan cooling can’t get this one??